Anyone know anything about camcorders/video cameras?

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matta

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 11, 2005
Messages
1,640
Location
Cape Town, South Africa
Hi Guys,

My wife and I have never owned a video camera. We have decided with me heading Stateside next month it would be good to pick one up but have no idea where to start! I don't plan on being a DOP or anything or producing HD content for the local news network, just looking for a good, solid, reliable camera that we can use to capture life's special moments.

I own a Mac and have iMovie and could get FCP to if the video bug bites, but the main purpose is just capturing memories of holidays, children (still to come) etc.

Where does one begin looking and what to look for? Budget wise we could spring around $300-$700USD.

Cheers

Matt
 
Matt,

I fix digital cameras for a living and used to shoot video for a living. That said, I'm no expert and have fallen behind on some of the new technology. I just fix 'em now - they might as well be toasters or irons!

First thing to consider is the video system used in your country. Looks like you are in a PAL country, while the US is NTSC. If you buy an NTSC video camera in the US you should be able to view it on your standard definition television (most PAL TVs will play NTSC but not vice versa) but keep in mind that it won't be the native system used in your country so you won't be able to give tapes to your friends and expect them to be able to play them in their cameras. In High Definition, the frame rates will be different - 30 frames in NTSC countries and 25 in PAL countries.

Down to the cameras themselves, the general trend is dismaying. Cameras seem to be built to a price these days with the overall construction less robust than in the past. I have a couple of older DV cameras that still function after nearly 10 years of good use but seemingly you'd be lucky to get half that out of a newer (but obviously much cheaper) cameras.

Formats - apparently most people (at least in Australia) now prefer DVD and Hard Disk Drive cameras to tape. Their new camera stores 100 hours on the internal drive. So they captured their wedding, their first-born, their dream home being built etc on their camera. Then the hard drive crashes. The repair guy usually hears about it.

How many old burnt DVDs do you own that still play?

Anyway, most people here are familiar with the pitfalls of those technologies and probably have old reel to reel tapes that will still play fine. I keep hearing about the demise of tape but it somehow seems to refuse to die - at least none of my carefully stored tapes show any signs of dying!

Having said all that, the brand of camera that seems to stand out in the reliability stakes would probably be Panasonic, followed by Canon. But they all have their little quirks and in that price range I suppose it's unfair to ask for more.

I'm dead tired right now but will try to come back with some specific recommendations unless others more knowledgeable come up with something...
 
I'm no expert but I use a Cannon MV150i - which is a mini DV tape and it
makes great little movies, also has a "stills" function @ 2 mega pixels.
Lens is CCD quality - almost broadcast quality.
Not at tiny as the new ones ( it's almost 5 years old ) but solid and has been
very reliable.
Firewire/USB etc and can add a decent mic on the top `'shoe'
Was £600 at the time, similar stuff is now around £300
Just my 2 c's.

Marty.
 
Well, I'd personally go for Super 8 and get some Kodachrome in there. :razz:

But, for camcorders, I liked the small Sony HD DV cameras. Can't remember the model number though.
 
My wife and I use Panasonic Mini-DV for filming the Young-un etc, and I also use it for filming track days in the Porsche...

I have a camera mount fixed permanently to the roll-cage... I'm in the process of wiring in a switched, regulated 7.9V DC feed so that I don't have to worry about leaving it on and running down the battery ... :oops: ... and also a pair of hard-wired spaced omni electrets [immune to wind noise] with 'belt-and-braces' blast filters, to capture engine noise, tire noise etc...

For me, SIZE and WEIGHT are important. I used to use a video 8 and I still have one, but the DV picture is vastly better, the ability to edit on either a PC or a mac (import down firewire, software usually included etc) and burn to DVD is a BIG plus over the old analog variations.

If you're flying a lot, also consider the size and weight of the batteries, tapes etc. Again, Mini-DV is usually a winner.

Personally I steer AWAY from the direct-to-DVD palm-corders; DV is a vastly higher resolution system, and you can create HD content, which may not matter to you now, but we now have HDTV at home, and pretty soon we will probably be moving to making Blu-Ray home movies, just as soon as the price becomes reasonable... -the ability to go back and make MUCH higher resolution discs to replace the older DVD-resolution MPEG-2 ones which we already made, has justified NOT buying a direct-to-DVD palmcorder already... -If we had, we'd be stuck with low-res forever; as it is we can now go back and make BETTER versions of the DVDs which we already downconverted.

I live in an NTSC country now, but I still deal with mum and familu back in PAL-land, and I have to say that I would feel inclined to say DO NOT buy an NTSC deck if you live in PAL-land... My experience is that you usually CANNOT view EITHER system on the other. (My main HDTV set at home will display either, and I have a couple of multi-standard DVD players etc, so I'm covered, but if you don't know that you have this, you could very well be screwed... -If you live in PAL territory, buy PAL, anything else is BEGGING for compatibility issues.

Keith
 
Hi Guys,

Thank you all for your insight and knowledge. As I shared I'm very wet behind the ears and these are new waters for me.

I do however have experience with 35mm film stock and still think the quality of 35mm camera is better than any high res digital camera I've seen/used.

Am I correct in thinking this is how most feel about the HD/DVD camera's that are around today using Mpeg-2 Compression? I assume DV tape allows one more options further down the line as Keef has shared than a 'fixed' Mpeg-2 compression imposed on the new line of consumer cameras?

I think I'm torn between the HD based camera for convenience and a good DV for the quality aspect.

As Mako and Keef shared I think buying something closer to home in my PAL format would be better. It seems the camera's I've been looking at around around $150 more expensive in my native country, but are PAL and also I'm supported by the warranty/service should anything go wrong.

I've read elsewhere aside form Mako's comment about Panasonic being a leader and have located 2 models that are available locally within my budget.

The first is a 3CCD (which I believe is a big deal) DV model called the
NV-GS230, specs and details can be found here: http://www.panasonic.co.za/ProductDetail.aspx?CatID=50&ProdID=702

The 2nd is one of the newer/latest gen Mpeg-2 HD based camera's called the SDR-H40, specs can be found here: http://www.panasonic.co.za/ProductDetail.aspx?CatID=50&ProdID=904

Price wise the DV one is only nominally cheaper than the HD varietal.

I also have access to select Canon and Sony Camera's if anyone has any suggestions?

Thanks again, the help is MUCH appreciated!

Matt
 
Keef, I need a chromoly cage for my saturn sl2, i just found out that this is suposedely the funnest car to drive since the early civic, now i know why i am burning the tyres off this thing.

check this, replaced a 12 dollar napa part, ects, engine coolant twmp switch, the 92's wre all defective, what this fixed was:


gas mileage improved
acceleration improved
catalytic will now last forever
radiator fan comes on
temp gauge is now accurate idle is smooth and reduced
emissions are reduced
car does not overheat during red lights
passes smog

all for 12 bucks.

too rich a mixture i guess.

TS 5587, if i recall correctly, make sure it is all brass.

pull the battery.
youi need to reset the chip anyway, to recieve the now restored mixture signal.
 
I think I'm torn between the HD based camera for convenience and a good DV for the quality aspect.

Price wise the DV one is only nominally cheaper than the HD varietal.

I also have access to select Canon and Sony Camera's if anyone has any suggestions?

I have a Sony HDV HDR-HC5. I think bought it for $1200 new but is now cheaper around $700-800.

There is no need to choose between HD or DV. My Sony can record both kinds on the same DV tape.

When I first played back an HD footage I recorded, played back (hooked up via HD to an HDTV) ... it was "WOW WOW WOW... DID I TOOK THAT?" The quality is way way way more better than DV. I am not going back to DV. (But it's nice to know that my Sony camera can still play my old miniDV tapes).

I use Final Cut Pro to import the footage from the camera , and you can export it to DV format, for burning into a DVD format.

I really would like a Canon professional camera but can't justify the big jump in cost. But this HD, sure beats DV.

Forgot to add that the HC-5 has touch screen LCD controls. Pretty cool to operate.
 
i got a small jvc videocamera with a harddrive inside. plug the usb to the camera and transfer the mpeg-2 files to your computer. pretty easy stuff. i think it was around 300-400€.

i had a dv camera on loan, it was always a pain in the ass to record a live night, you had to change the dv tape after what, 1,5 hours? the harddrive takes a good amount of hours compared to that. i don't know what the situation is now with the length of the tapes.


i guess the quality is not the greatest in my camera, but i've been recording some shows of mine. that's why I basically bought it for. it's good enough for me.
 
Matt - As I mentioned earlier I'm not up on all the latest so you may want to verify anything I say.

You said you were travelling stateside to buy but now it looks as though you're trying to buy from "home". If that's because of home format, try B&H in NYC. Last I knew they were pretty big on supplying PAL equipment at US prices.

[quote author="matta"]I assume DV tape allows one more options further down the line...[/quote]
DV tape is just the format the data is recorded on. What I believe Keith was referring to was that the Motion JPEG (basically a series of JPEGs) of standard definition DV has to be re-compressed into MPEG2 (an occasional master frame with difference frames following it) to make a DVD, resulting in a lower quality picture. You can always go back to your standard definition DV tape to recover all the information that was recorded.

Some of the new High Definition formats record MPEG2 on DV tape. Each time you edit MPEG2 there will be some alteration of data at the edit points as the editing program grapples with the data to construct the picture based on the scant data available and create the transition.

They used to say that (standard) DV could do frame accurate cuts because each frame is just like a still picture so straight cuts do not require re-rendering/encoding. With MPEG2 even if you do straight cuts your editing program may have to construct a new master frame where you decide to edit as all the data for a complete picture may not exist where your cut is.

All that aside, the reason why I like tape is because of archival value. Even if you transfer your Hard Disk or DVD data it most likely goes to another hard disk or DVD. So don't confuse this with the quality aspect - to me the main benefit of DV tape is that it is TAPE. It's all good and well to be able to stick hours and hours of footage onto a hard disk, but then you are reduced to scrolling through thumbnails on your LCD to find what you want. I would rather walk to a shelf, find a written legend on the spine of a tape and dump the footage into my editing program.

Something I don't think has been mentioned so far is that there are also cameras that write to flash memory. My understanding is that this type of memory has a finite number of read/write cycles but the idea of having no mechanical parts is appealing. But we'll have to see if, in fact, this is any more reliable than well-proven DV tape mechs or if the medium is any more robust than ribbons of tape. I've definitely had tapes jam but I've also seen flash memory fail.

[quote author="matta"]I think I'm torn between the HD based camera for convenience and a good DV for the quality aspect. [/quote]

You can have both, as mentioned before. But some of the comments above might be construed as saying that DV is HD; it is not. You can buy a DV tape camera that only records standard definition even today. Hopefully that is very clear now.

[quote author="matta"]I do however have experience with 35mm film stock and still think the quality of 35mm camera is better than any high res digital camera I've seen/used. [/quote]

One day this will no longer be true. But they will have to solve the achilles heel of electronic imager technology:

Dust.
 
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