Much lower price, and excellent picture.

I have had my JVC GY-DV300UZ now for 3 days.

My reasons for buying this camera was that it was fairly inexpensive for the features, and had everything that I needed in a camera.

The audio quality is very good. 2 selectable and manually adjustable audio channels, with xlr inputs with phantom power for each. Switches on the back allow you to toggle between which mic goes to which channel and which channel's you would like to monitor. It also has a audio meter display on the viewfinder and lcd screen.

The picture quality is excellent, and the colour reproduction is extremely true. It has a very soft image and great detail. It can also be adjusted to darken or lighten blacks.

The DV300UZ's important manual features (iris, shutter, gain, white balance) are not menu based, making quick alterations simple. One slight annoyance I have found is that when I change the aperture dial, the camera may lag and not change immediately, or at all. It may take a few turns of the dial to get an f stop. This is not a big deal though.

The camera also allows you to store 2 sets of easily switchable settings. From the factory, the camera comes with it set to all auto presets on "cam A" and all manual presets on "cam B". These can easily be changed to allow for indoor or outdoor shooting, or things of that nature. I find this a very useful feature.

By navigating through the menu, you can get several other features such as letterbox (not a stretched 16:9), cine gamma, colour matrix, audio presets, etc.

I have read about this camera feeling "cheap" or "breakable", but I assure this is not the case. The camera is made of a sturdy magnesium frame, and feels very strong to me. My father knocked mine off the table yesterday where it fell about 50 cm to the tile floor. My heart skipped 2 to 3 beats, but the camera emerged unscathed. Not a scratch or blemish in sight. Nothing in the camera malfunctions either. I also hear a rattling noise in the lens area as reported by one review, which also "disappears when the camera is turned on." My guess is that this is probably the optical image stabilizer. It is not a broken sounding noise, more of something on a slide.

About the non removable lens hood: before this camera, I shot with an old Sony VX3, which also had a 52mm thread. I have a raynox fisheye and a adapter to use the 58mm lens on the 52mm threads. I also used a uv filter for protection and a little more wideness with the fisheye. I can see that with one more uv or skylight filter, that will push the fisheye well past the hood, without vignetting.

All in all, I highly recommend this camera.