I have been using almost exclusively Panasonic gear for a while now. Have used some Canon gear and some Sony on occasion, but very rare, and I prefer the Panasonic "look" and the way everything is laid out.

Your best bang for your buck right now is the Panasonic AC130. It's $3,249 right now at B&H. Excellent camera, probably a pretty good replacement for your XL2 (it has an extremely long integrated lens). Records to SDHC media in the AVCHD format. We've got a couple and they're very good. There are some features on those AC130 cams that make it really stand out above similar cameras.

You could also consider the HMC150, the predecessor to the AC130. It's only a couple hundred bucks cheaper and not nearly as good, but if you really felt like you had to shave off a couple hundred bucks, that's one way you could do it.

Going down the financial ladder, Panasonic has the shoulder mount HMC80. It's not quite as good overall as the AC130, but it does have a shoulder mount form factor so that might be important to some people. It's affordable though, at around the $2,000 mark right now, and would match pretty well with the other Panasonic cameras.

My advice would be to up the budget and go in for two of the AC130 cameras. You're looking at a total of $6,500 for two of those.

In a somewhat different direction, you may want to check out the soon-to-be-released Blackmagic Design Cinema camera. It doesn't include a lens but will work with most types of lenses and shoots 2.5K resolution. It's setup to be a real gamechanger when it ships in a couple of months. It's only $3,000 list price, so expect to see the price go down slightly after it ships, but I also imagine that demand is going to be incredibly high so if you want that one, and you need it this year, you might want to consider a pre-order.

Some things to consider with tapeless workflows using SDHC cards....do not go cheap on the cards! Buy the best cards available, and buy only from reputable vendors (like B&H) and NOT from ebay or other spots (you'll just end up with knock-off cards that probably won't work). For the AC130, don't buy a 3rd party battery, they don't save you that much money and most of them have an exponential roll-off discharge pattern, so 50% remaining charge isn't "really" 50% (the Panasonic batteries discharge in a linear pattern). The Panasonic batteries also usually have 20% more charge capacity, something that helps you understand why they cost about 20% more in most cases. Also, the Panasonic batteries on the AC130, AC160, AF100 and HPX250 are the same battery, so you have some flexibility for "future-proofing," and that battery will tell you exactly how much time is remaining. If it says you have 2 minutes remaining, you have exactly 120 seconds left on the battery (sometimes very slightly more, but the point is you KNOW how much is left). The 3rd party batteries don't update the remaining charge time, and even if they did, it would be unreliable because of the previously mentioned exponential discharge pattern.

Hope this helps!

PS - Here's a green screen sample we did with the HMC150 4-5 months ago:

You can see it keys very nicely (used PPro, didn't even have to open After Effects....we also did a good job lighting of course). The AC130 is a good bit better than this but we don't have any current green screen samples on it yet. This is using ONLY the default AVCHD internal recording on the camera....no Ninja, KiPro or anything like that. Just good ol' AVCHD 4:2:0 video.

Jim Simon wrote:

 

Here's a list.

 

B&H Cameras

 

The two that I'd be looking at seriously are the canon XF100 and the Panasonic HMC150.  The Canon probably has the sharper image, and the media is easier to work with.  But the Panasonic has the longer zoom range (handy for sports), and uses superior CCDs rather than inferior CMOS chips, so you don't get any rolling shutter artifacts.

Ah, the much debated CCD vs CMOS battle rages on....

Here's an event shot with 3 cameras, 2 of which are the AC130 (CMOS sensors) and 1 camera is an HMC150 (CCD sensors). There were plenty of camera flashes going off (there were two pro photogs right at the front of the stage, nevermind the two strobing gobos). There is more than enough motion in the frame to induce the jello/skew everyone is afraid of...however, look at this CMOS camera and tell me how terrible you think the skew/jellow/flash-banding really is in a real world scenario. Keep in mind that this was shot at 24p, where the CMOS artifiacts are most clearly exhibited (compared with 60i or 60p):

Better yet, since the CCD is so much better, how about you just tell me which of the cameras you think was shooting on the HMC150? It should be obvious, right?

Jim Simon wrote:

 

you just tell me which of the cameras you think was shooting on the HMC150?

 

Wide shot in the back.

 

Honestly, it looks good Christian.  It gives me hope for the 130.  However, I didn't really see all that many flashes in the close up shots.  Not like I see at a wedding, anyway, where there could literally be 2 or 3 flashes per second.

Close, but that was an AC130 in the back. We put that there and had the HMC150 on house left since the AC130 has nearly twice as much lens and slightly better light handling. Actually, with the stage being about 80 feet from the booth camera, and only about 25 feet from the HMC150, the relative framing was nearly identical. Tells you how amazing that lens is. We were able to get nearly head-to-waist shots from the control booth on the AC130. Very nice, good exposure, although the camera is obviously more sensitive to the touch when at full telephoto like that.

One of our guys shot a wedding recently and although we don't have any clips up yet, you can see in the video that the flash banding is a non-issue on the AC130. It is there, of course (it isn't the HPX250, after all), but you only notice it if you stop the frame on a flash....but it is dramatically reduced compared to all previous CMOS cameras I've worked with. Some of the earlier ones were just flat ugly to me with the wobble, skew, flash-banding....ugh, just nasty.

Here's  a piece shot with the AC130 and the AF100. You'll notice a flash behind the speaker right at about the 1:37 mark. You actually see the camera flash burst, so it's about as bad as it can get, but you'll notice it's still quite pretty for a CMOS. There are a few more flash bursts after that point as well.

I wouldn't recommend the HMC40. It's probably a decent match for the HMC150, but lousy in a lot of little ways.

I really REALLY recommend stepping up to the AC130. If you want, you could pair it with the Panasonic GH2 which is a DSLR that records pretty amazing video. It's very affordable, and has a sensor crop function that lets you get pretty amazing reach on your lenses without something as terrible as digital zoom (barfed a little in my mouth when I said that).

Really, if you get HMC150 and save those $250, you'll bump into someone with an AC130 one day and realize what a mistake it was to save those dollars when you could have just bumped up a little to the AC130. Again, HMC150 as a b-cam, sure, absolutely. As the MAIN cam, today, in May 2012, I'd recommend against it.