Cameras that use the AVCHD format

Question

I was trying to decide, for a possible future purchase, between the Panasonic AG-AF100 and the Sony FS 100UK.
However, I am having reservations now. I am not conversant with the intricacies of the various codecs and someone mentioned in an article that thet would not use the AVCHD format under any circumstances. Probably a biased viewpoint no doubt but it has me thinking and now hesitant.
Can anyone advise me as to whether this is a detriment when thinking of these two cameras since they both use the AVCHD format? At the moment I am using a Canon XH A1s.
I hope this is not a dumb post. Please go easy on me :-)
Trevor

Answer 1

Well, I can tell you that there is a substantial improvement when going from HDV to AVCHD. It's very visible. I just cut some HDV footage for the first time in years yesterday, after cutting mostly AVCHD for the last 3-4 years now. It was painful to look at, even though it was 1080.
As for AVCHD in general, it's not the easiest format to edit. It is highly compressed. That being said, Premiere Pro CS6 and a quality Nvidia GPU combine to make editing AVCHD almost a non-issue nowadays.
I know plenty of folks who shoot on AVCHD cameras and bypass the compression by recording to a separate recorder via HD-SDI or HDMI. Generally speaking it's for color correction latitude, since most serious filmmakers would prefer to capture 4:2:2 than 4:2:0.
However, I also know quite a few adventurers who do features and record directly to the AVCHD media on the AF100. One guy I know has even had it checked out by Technicolor and they said it looked great.
Here's one of his features shot on the AF100, direct to the AVCHD media onboard:
I know he recently did some other work with a Canon 5D and recording off the camera but then the 5D is bit of a different beast than the AF100 or FS100.
As for choosing between the Sony and Panasonic....well, I'm almost as big of an Adobe fanboy as I am a Panasonic fanboy. I've used the Panasonic cameras for years and I really have found that the layout of the camera controls, the depth of the camera controls and the overall image from Panasonic cameras is excellent. I've never been much impressed with Sony gear, it used to be a lot worse (when you used a Sony camera, you used to pretty much be obligated to use Sony media, Sony hardware, etc). But I've found Sony cameras to be a bit less user friendly, with a lot of things either buried in menus or not available at all when compared to their Panasonic counterparts. Just one man's opinion, take it or leave it.
I really like the images from the AF100, we've worked with it a few times now and it's quite versatile. There are, however, more options coming soon. If you are interested in being on the bleeding edge of technology, Blackmagic Design is soon releasing their first ever camera, a 2.5K sensor camera for about $3,000. Like the AF100, it doesn't include a lens but can work with most any glass out there. However, it IS the company's first foray into any kind of camera, and it's completely untested by the user community at large so if you need a camera with a confirmed workflow, it ain't ready for primetime yet.