The following is compiled from a comment by FreshDV reader “Adam” that was so detailed and extensive I decided to promote it to a post. You can view the original comment thread in context here.

FreshDV reader Adam says:
Mine arrived last week and here are my initial observations, cobbled together from various posts I’ve made elsewhere. It’s light and heavy at the same time, in a good way. Very light for its size, but still a good 50% heavier than my FX1. The bulk is comforting. With the big battery on the back it’s nicely balanced, but we’ll see how I feel after several hours of shooting. Shoulder pad is, as others have mentioned, unbelievably hard. They couldn’t stick a pad on it? Also, while it has a huge lens shade, they give it a cheap plastic lens cap and no place to put it while shooting. It just dangles there. At least my old VX2000 had a clip so you could stick it to the hand grip while shooting. For this price they couldn’t give you the “barn-door� lens shade like the FX1? Even though it isn’t mentioned anywhere in the literature; the way the leash attaches to the hand-grip, you just pull the other end of the leash and it snugs the cap up against the grip. The leash is still dangling, but at least the cap isn’t banging around while you’re shooting. Still would love a lens hood with the barn doors, but I understand why they don’t have one (yet). On the FX1 and FX7 hoods (neither of which fit), the locking set screw for the hood itself is on the opposite side from the barn-door switch, which means the set-screw bangs into the forward hand grip beside the lens when you try to lock it on. If they can design a hood with both of these pieces on the side by your left hand, it would work.

Auto focus, even in very low light, appears crisp and very fast. I went outside at night with only patio lights fired up and aimed at a wood column. After a moment’s hesitation, the lens snapped into sharp focus, enough to read the grain on the wood. Have no idea how much gain it was adding; will try to run some tape this weekend and see what the actual figures are. It does display full data code on playback if you tell it to. Annoying: if you even touch the focusing ring, no matter how lightly, a message pops up in the viewfinder telling you it’s on auto-focus and you have to push the manual button to make the ring work. Obviously if you’re in manual already this isn’t an issue. But if you’re shooting auto and using your left hand on the lens to help steady and point, you’ll be touching this ring a lot whether you want to or not. Also, the viewfinder is very….pixel-y. Not at all like the old B&W CRT viewfinders in old cameras. But this is to be expected with very tiny LCDs. Just takes some getting used to.

Don’t plan on holding this thing on your shoulder if you’ve got anything mounted to the bottom of the camera via the tripod screw. A tripod plate or XLR adapter will dig directly into your collarbone and well into the shoulder-rest area. You can defeat this somewhat by not using the little set-pin on the tripod plate (if it has one) and sliding the mounting plate far forward, so that the pin is not in the locking hole. And you could get a locking shoe adapter and mount the sound box on one of the cold shoes (it has two). Interestingly, this isn’t a sliding shoulder rest like we’ve seen in the past. It screws into a pair of discrete mounting holes; to adjust it you must remove it completely and re-position it over a different pair of holes. There are nine holes allowing for five positions if you want to use both screws, or nine, I guess, if you’re okay with using only one. This could prove slightly troublesome if you need to switch shooters quickly.

I’ve also ordered the long camera plate to go with the 503HDV tripod head. Even though the cam is still rather front heavy (as the back appears to be largely empty) the CoG appears to be somewhat rearward of where the tripod mounting screws are; it’s actually slightly aft of the DISPLAY/BATT INFO button. So a longer plate will allow for more adjustment of the cam on the legs. Another nice thing: Full size I/O jacks so you can use regular cables for everything, covered by proper doors with sort-of real hinges, instead of the little dangly covers from the past.

I just shot some fairly low-light stuff backstage at a musical production. Under the worklights the cam added between 9 and 18dB gain. At 15-18 dB the grain was very noticeable. I think most people would consider this “unusable� for HDV, but if you like that “filmic� grainy look you may think it is fine. Color fidelity was fine. At 9-12 dB the grain is there but you have to look for it. It is mostly visible in dark mid-tones, not in the blacks. At 6dB and below it is not noticeable at all. Very clear, crisp HDV images, and very quick and accurate autofocus.

Here the HD1000U is half the price of an FX1, and performs admirably for the price. I have both and I think I’ll need to turn sharpness and color up on the FX1 and down on the HD1000U to get them to match.

Editor’s note: Adam is correct…B&H still prices the HDR-FX1 at over $3000 new, while the HD1000U is priced around $1600. For a look at how the 1000U stacks up against the Canon XHA1, see Part 2 of Jan Ozer’s DCP review.