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Some good points here. Dave, I was surprised at the CCI review giving the Canon 800 lines of horizontal resolution (Videomaker gave it 900!). Yet CCI seemed to feel that the Sony & Canon were pretty close in this area. It should be noted that CCI gave the Sony a higher vertical resolution than the Canon. It's interesting that Videomaker's numbers were different.
But yes, in low light I don't think there's a comparison. I've never seen such velvety blacks and absurdly low noise levels (with low lux off). Even the Z5 has higher noise levels, but a brighter picture.
Darrin, I only have an in-store test I did with the S-10 just yesterday with an SD card I brought to the store. It appeared just a bit sharper than the Sony, but not significantly so at all...at least indoors. I agree with Dave about the in-camera sharpening that Canon seems to do. I didn't notice any significant difference in color though. I have seen some Sony clips though where certain shades of green (grass) appeared to be a bit hyped.
Interestingly, even in a well-lit store like Best Buy, as I zoomed in with the Canon in a somewhat darker area of the store, I began to see a dimming of the image. The same scene on the Sony 500 showed no dimming at all when fully zoomed. Frankly I was surprised that the Canon began to dim in an environment like that. I believe one of the reviews I read indicated that the Canon's low light was actually worse this year than last year. That scene was the single biggest differentiator in my in-store tests.
Jack, I fully agree about the Sony sound. There is a remarkable 'fullness' to the sound when played through a surround sound system. Once you go back to the 2-channel sound of the Canon or any other 2-channel cam, the sound just becomes 'dead'. That's always been a disappointment with my Canon HG21.
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