My friend and I currently use a Canon GL-2 to make some movies for fun. We wanted to upgrade to something that is HD and we were also looking in to something that shoots 24p (not true film 24p, we're on a budget). We were considering stepping down to a consumer level camera like the Canon VIXIA HV30 with possibly a DOF adapter later (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/553638-REG/Canon__VIXIA_HV30_HDV_High.html) but we also thought that the Sony HDR-FX1000 (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/581316-REG/Sony_HDR_FX1000_HDR_FX1000_Handycam_HDV_Camcorder.html) would be really good in terms of color quality. Is it worth spending a lot more money on the better camera.
We are mostly concerned with getting excellent picture quality, but we are doing this for fun (we'll show movies to people make some DVDs, but we're not making money off of this really).
Just looking for some thoughts. We will sell the GL-2 so it would be nice to use all of that money for the new camera rather than throwing in another $2000
I can't recommend a specific camera, but make sure the one you get has a decent microphone or an option to plug in an external one. I've heard of people buying ones that got great picture quality for a good price only to find out the audio sounded like crap.
| weableandbob wrote: |
| I can't recommend a specific camera, but make sure the one you get has a decent microphone or an option to plug in an external one. I've heard of people buying ones that got great picture quality for a good price only to find out the audio sounded like crap. |
Oh I know that consumer (and even the prosumer GL2 I've used) have crap sound quality. A mic will be the next upgrade.
Right now we're pretty much settled on the Canon Vixia HF S100.
Also considering getting a jag35 shallow depth of field adapter and maybe upgrading our current "lighting" (right now we have a couple of work lights and we use walls/paper whatever to bounce the light)If you're not worried about sound much, and want HD and are on a budget, try the
Sony HDR-FX7.
Good camera, very good visuals, but very bad audio quality. No XLR connectors either. But the plus point is that its very compact in size.
think about getting an SLR digital camera that also shoots HD footage. if you get a decent one, you'll have absolutely professional quality footage (some scenes from slumdog millionaire were shot on an SLR)...
something to think about. or rent the 'big red one' or something for $1000/day xD
Well our budget is $1500 but we'd like to spend closer to $1000 so so far, we're getting the Canon Vixia HF S100
The only thing I don't like is the lack of the viewfinder (lcd only). Could be bad, but it is a good HD camcorder offering 24p and flash memory. Plus the sensor size is pretty decent for such a small camera.
Well, you get what you pay for. I'd look for something with 3 chips. The current price/performance
'sweet spot' in my eyes is the sony EX-1. For about 6 grand (or $5,500 B-stock) you get a camera
that is about 95% of what the $70 thousand dollar cameras are. Of course if you don't have the
money, you don't have the money. I'd look for something with an external mic input, and as
large a sensor as you can get if you aren't going with a 3 chip cam. Personally 24p is NOT that
big a deal to me.....but that's just me. I can add 24p in post if I want, but it is not nearly
as important to me as other things. Of course if the camera has it, it is a bonus, but I wouldn't
pay extra for it. Also, look at what codec the camera is using. AVCHD? HDV? Of course better
than either of these is XDCAM HD which is what the sony EX-1 uses, but you want to check and
see if your edit program will work with the 'output' of your camera. These days, that is not
such a certainty anymore.
| Alaskacameradude wrote: |
Well, you get what you pay for. I'd look for something with 3 chips. The current price/performance
'sweet spot' in my eyes is the sony EX-1. For about 6 grand (or $5,500 B-stock) you get a camera
that is about 95% of what the $70 thousand dollar cameras are. Of course if you don't have the
money, you don't have the money. I'd look for something with an external mic input, and as
large a sensor as you can get if you aren't going with a 3 chip cam. Personally 24p is NOT that
big a deal to me.....but that's just me. I can add 24p in post if I want, but it is not nearly
as important to me as other things. Of course if the camera has it, it is a bonus, but I wouldn't
pay extra for it. Also, look at what codec the camera is using. AVCHD? HDV? Of course better
than either of these is XDCAM HD which is what the sony EX-1 uses, but you want to check and
see if your edit program will work with the 'output' of your camera. These days, that is not
such a certainty anymore. |
We ended up getting the HV40
The 24p is actually really nice because it is true progressive frames (so no deinterlacing related artifacts and no pull-down).
Sure, if I had the money I'd love something better, but this is really nice on a budget. Heck, we're engineers who want to make some movies. | snowboardalliance wrote: |
| Alaskacameradude wrote: | Well, you get what you pay for. I'd look for something with 3 chips. The current price/performance
'sweet spot' in my eyes is the sony EX-1. For about 6 grand (or $5,500 B-stock) you get a camera
that is about 95% of what the $70 thousand dollar cameras are. Of course if you don't have the
money, you don't have the money. I'd look for something with an external mic input, and as
large a sensor as you can get if you aren't going with a 3 chip cam. Personally 24p is NOT that
big a deal to me.....but that's just me. I can add 24p in post if I want, but it is not nearly
as important to me as other things. Of course if the camera has it, it is a bonus, but I wouldn't
pay extra for it. Also, look at what codec the camera is using. AVCHD? HDV? Of course better
than either of these is XDCAM HD which is what the sony EX-1 uses, but you want to check and
see if your edit program will work with the 'output' of your camera. These days, that is not
such a certainty anymore. |
We ended up getting the HV40
The 24p is actually really nice because it is true progressive frames (so no deinterlacing related artifacts and no pull-down).
Sure, if I had the money I'd love something better, but this is really nice on a budget. Heck, we're engineers who want to make some movies. |
Ya, I get that. Sorry, I do this as my job so I always recommend the higher end stuff I guess. I've
heard good things about that camera from a couple people that have it, so I think you did good.
In a related development, I wanted to 'play around' doing some engineering.....what would you recommend? LOLpersonally i love the gl-2....too get really fancy the xl-2 is a really nice one but for the money the gl-2 is an awesome setup...do yourself a favor get the dual 80gb harddrives for it
Just 160 gigs of HDD space? (assuming it's in RAID 0 and not in RAID 1)
Isn't that a bit too less?
I've got a standard consumer SD MiniDV cam, and we shoot a lot of stuff of me and my friends fooling around, and we run out of disc space very, very fast everytime we go out and shoot something and consequently dump the captured footage to disc. Not to mention the additional space needed to edit it and render the outputs.
I'd recommend getting dual 1.5 terrabyte harddrives and putting them in RAID 0.
