Re: Away from shooting/editing for six years - need your thoughts!

The modern upgrade to the DVX100 was the HMC-150 ( I own one ), which has been upgraded again by the new AC-130 with it's 22x zoom lens.

These cameras function very much like your old DVX100, but use solid-state memory cards, and shoot HD images.

You can find used HMC-150 cameras selling for about $2,000 right now, and the AC-130 sells for about $3,500 new.

If you are a Mac user, you will have to learn how to process AVCHD video footage, which is a little more complicated than editing AVCHD with Adobe Premiere or Sony Vegas Pro under Windows.

The AF-100 is the first large sensor ( Micro 4/3 lens mount ) video camera from Panasonic, but it's a lot different to shoot with than a DVX100 / HMC-150 / AC-130. The AF-100 does not come with a lens, and requires a lot of 3rd party gear to use as a hand-held camera. It's a very nice look, but it's a digital cine camera, which is very different than an ENG style video camera.

Also, the Panasonic GH2 DSLR camera ( less than $1,000 ) also shoots Micro 4/3 video, and there is a free "hack" that modifies the camera to shoot exceptionally good video. ( with image quality that compares to digital cine cameras costing more than $15,000 )