4x3 vs 16x9 on Sony VX2100

Going by that camera's price point, it should shoot real Anamorphic 16:9 and not a fake "letterbox" effect.
Anamorphic uses the same number of pixels as 4:3 but the image is stretched horizontally on playback. That would cause a negligable reduction of horizontal resolution -the same number of pixels being spread over a wider "screen" size.

As the DV format uses a 5:1 compression ratio, that should hardly be noticable.
What are your Easy Setup and Sequence Settings in FCP?
How are you viewing the footage?

that camera shoots two different kinds of widescreen, letterbox and squeeze. You want to use squeeze, or you'll be throwing away a ton of resolution on recording black bars. FCP will unsqueeze it.

Consult a manual for how to switch between the two.

When you select widescreen, your camera's viewer is simply showing you a 16:9 image in a viewer with a 4:3 aspect ratio. There HAS to be black bars top and bottom.

The real question is, do those bars come through when capturing using the DV/NTSC 48khz anamorphic preset?

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If it is letterboxing the picture when you play out to TV, I'm gonna bet that it's recording the black bars to tape, which means that you are essentially using about 30% of your horizontal resolution to record black.

If there's not a mode called "squeeze", you're out of luck.

You need to understand much more about video than you currently do.

All DV/NTSC formats (4:3 and 16:9) record a 720 pixel wide image.

When you record as 4:3, you are using 720 pixels to represent 640 pixels if the pixels were square.

When you record as 16:9, you are using 720 pixels to represent 854 pixels if the pixels were square.

What this means is, in 4:3 images you have more pixels to fill in image detail (720>640).
When dealing with 16:9, you have fewer pixels (720>854) representing a larger area.

On a computer screen, this difference may be noticeable. Once played on a TV, it is not usually so noticeable.

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Most DV, without regard to aspect ratio, will look like junk when played on a current HDTV.

There real question is - which aspect ratio fits the story you are telling. For my money, that's the guide.

There's lots of stuff out there that is as clear as a summer's sky and you want to gag after 15 seconds of it.

ymmv. Have fun.

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And in totally pedantic mode, you are capturing and editing video. Film is a different kettle of fish.

On your SD (non-widescreen TV) 16:9 anamorphic footage should fill the whole frame, but look "squished". In the computer, you will be "unsquishing" it to make a true (not letterboxed) widescreen image.

That's what anamorphic video means - squeezes a widescreen image so that it can be stored into a standard 4:3 aspect ratio.