Excellent camera hands down.

I was looking for a new miniDV cam for a long time. I had to make sure that the choice was researched and researched so I didn't go wrong. I knew I wanted a 3CCD camera. That seperates colors and luminance and contrast I think. Something like that. You can look that up and see for yourself exactly what it is but each chip does it's own job compared to a 1 chip camera doing everything. Broadcast cameras are 3ccd cams, but slightly bigger chips.

After looking at the XL1 and the Panasonic DVX100, which happens to shoot at 24fps, I still chose the GL2 for a few major reasons.

First off you get a lens which zooms to 20x. No one else can claim even close to that. Maybe I've seen a 16x zoom somewhere else, but it's still not 20x!

The sound is great and has auto/manual control. Mic, normal, voice, wind.

If your object is to film your kids or sports events, you are in luck. This camera looks like broadcast quality. It's crisp and full of color. Don't forget to buy a polarizer/UV filter kit though so nothing damages the lens.
If your object is to make short movies and such, you'll be able to obtain excellent results, but it's not quite a point and shoot camera for that. This is actually a good thing though because there's plenty of lighting adjustments you can make right in the camera menu itself. F stop, aperature, white balance, color gain, sharpness.

Then you can dump it onto your PC to edit and dump right back onto the camera using the included firewire for lossless digital edited material, it's great. Canon includes a CD for drivers you will need and a USB cable to import the images from the SD card included. It's only 8 megs, which in full quality mode leaves you 8 picture to take. I recommend buying at least a 64 meg SD card if you like to take pictures. The quality of the pictures is not as good as the video it captures but hey, it's not a camera first and a camcorder 2nd! The quality is fine enough to enjoy the pictures and send to people, or even to use for selling stuff on ebay.

Even before you buy a camcorder of this expense you will need these few things.

For casual filming:

UV/Polarizing filter
Tripod.
Extra Battery. Get on Ebay for $40 or similar instead of Canon's $100+ battery that does the same thing.
They also have a light you can add too.

For filming movies or documentaries/weddings.
Add a glidecam 2000 Pro
Wide Angle Lens
VL-10i video light that uses the same battery as the camera uses seperately. This allows a nice charge for just the light. You can use it on the camera itself or set it down and create some lighting effects.

Update: 2/24/04

So far this camera has proved to be very film-like when shooting short films. If you edit in Vegas 4.0, it's always best to shoot in Normal mode and not movie mode, which was a mistake I made at first. It loses the initial resolution that makes the camera so good.....you need to change everything later in post because it's the initial quality you want to keep from the GL2. Frame mode looks great, but you can achieve similar, if not better film-like looks later on down the road in post as I said before.

Anyways..... This camera given the equipment used on can make an excellent film experience. Just add a few things like I've said before and you're good to go. A Dolly would be nice too, lol.

Ok, the more I've experimented the more I realize that shooting in Frame Mode is actually pretty good. I guess it's actually less rendering time in Vegas 5(Newest version) and is true 30 fps progressive. Someone also said it's lighting is a bit better in Frame Mode than in Interlaced mode. You can really make the GL2 look film-like if the scene is well lit. After it's in Vegas you can simply add some Magic Bullet movie looks and you can color correct all you want for the look you want. Plus the Image Stabalization is probably the best there is. Unlike many Panasonics the Canon's IS is optical, thus the reason they call it OIS not EIS.