Hi there,
I have an opportunity to pick up a SONY HVR V1U for £950. It's basically brand new and seems to have done under 20 Hours (there is a pic of the LCD screen and it says 2 X 10). I don't really know much about this camera so I thought I would ask here to see if you lot thought it was a good deal.
Cheers
I have a V1U. It's actually a great camera. Right now in the US, I think B&H (our main retailer for things like this) sells it for around $3800. I got mine on ebay for a little less than that. I've used it for everytning from making movies to wedding videography to greenscreen work. The only down sides are the following:
24p is wierd. It's not quite 24p - it seems interpolated. I've heard that this is not Sony's fault, but the fault of the HDV codec. I just used a motion blur algorithm for my movie and it worked out fine.
Lighting. For videography you will probably not run into many problems with light. The avg light setup with a few 600w / 300w lights works fine. Even if you shoot a wedding, you can push to 9db with very little grain. Problem comes in when you want to shoot through a 35mm adapter. Because most adapters take .5 to .7 stops of light. Then you have to zoom in all the way on the camera you're forced into another .5 to .7 stops of light lost. Then the 35mm lens will be at least 1 to 2 stops of light and this is for the lowest setting. so in all you'll loose about 2.5 to 3 stops of light through an adapter. If you have plenty of light, this is not a problem. My max light was a 1K (I had 3 of them), I was able to use the camera fine - when I got into the editing room, it seemed as though most of my shots were approx .7 stops too low, so I had to boost them in post.
It's a great camera - takes awesome images, but if you want to do filmmaking with an adapter you need lights - I'd say borrow at least 1 2K from somebody.
Three people have rented the camera from me and all of them have been amazed at the stunning picture. Two of the three used it for feature film work. All 3 said they'd definately rent from me again, dispite the low light problem.
Here are a few scenes with the camera. (All need to be color corrected) but you can see when I'm outside and in one room the light is pretty good, only in one scene the light seems kind of dim.
http://www.vimeo.com/1611217