Looking to get a last minute gift for the family. Need something made for shooting video, stills not important. Trying to keep under $500.
Been looking at reviews tonight but am finding so many mixed reviews. Figured I would try out you guys.
As a shooter, we had to pay $50,000 to get what comes in a $500 camera now.
Mostly, you need to determine if you want a shoulder mount camera or a handheld and i’d assume a handheld.
Personally, I’d suggest Canon, Sony or Nikon. Look thru the reviews from C-net and work from there. mostly, you are looking for the features that are critical to you.
Don’t worry about ‘edit-in-camera’ features, as your editing software will have more than enuf features.
Worry about getting a camera that is the heaviest that you will tolerate carrying (yields the most stable image), try to stay away from electronic stabilization.
In the long run, the software you chose for editing is a more sensitive issue. I suggest Adobe Premiere Elements to most, but many even think it’s too difficult. Work thru the issue, but remember if you want professional editing done, you’ll lose all the work you personally have done.
We bought a Sony HDR SR12 in November 2008. This was $1K at the time, and is not a current model any more. My brother bought a Sony HDR SR160 this summer for about $550. I highly recommend the HD video cameras. The detail is great on a larger HD TV. You have a choice of editing the video and making a Standard Definition disk, a High Def disk in the Sony AVCHD format, or a Blue Ray disk. Blue Ray disks do require a Blue Ray burner which can be obtained for $100-200+. A 25GB Blue Ray disk holds about two hours of Blue Ray video and costs start at a little over a dollar. A standard 4.7GB DVD holds about 2 hours in Standard Def and about 35 minutes in the High Def AVCHD format.
I do recommend the video cameras with the Hard Disk Drive, and the larger the better. I have recorded over 10 hours of Scuba diving video and a few more hours of video on land during vacations without the need to download and delete footage on the camera, and still had a lot of room left. We either connect the camera or computer to a TV directly or download to the computer to make disks.
Be aware that High Def video takes a lot of room on your computer. I have a laptop with a 320GB hard drive. I have over 200 GB of video footage on the hard drive and have moved a lot to an external hard drive. When editing and creating a video you are actually making another copy. This does take processing power and space. Also, converting a file to a different format to burn to a disk can take several hours. I have seen the computer work for between 5 and 18 hours depending on the movie length. Yes I would still do it again.
The first thing I would look at would be user-friendly controls.That is if the whole family will be using it.Canon comes to mind,the Sonys are decent though.
Thanks for the input. My wife does photography as her hobby so we already have adobe elements and premiere. We also have a ton of storage. Just need the video camera.
X2
1. storage = external
2. hard disk in camera
3. get a laptop for intermediate on site transfer of files 1T comes to mind.
4. good on premiere, worth learning curve.
I’ve been very happy with the Kodak Playsport. You can shoot in 1080P HD. I shoot all of my vids in 720P HD for manageable file sizes. Comes with editing software. Water proof down to 10 feet under water.
If you go to YouTube and search on test video for Playsport, you can see the end results from a lot of different users. You can view my channel for stuff I’ve done. Nothing fancy, but works well for what I do.
http://www.youtube.com/user/TwoBelowZero?feature=guide
-J.
Quote:
I’ve been very happy with the Kodak Playsport. You can shoot in 1080P HD. I shoot all of my vids in 720P HD for manageable file sizes. Comes with editing software. Water proof down to 10 feet under water.
If you go to YouTube and search on test video for Playsport, you can see the end results from a lot of different users. You can view my channel for stuff I’ve done. Nothing fancy, but works well for what I do.
http://www.youtube.com/user/TwoBelowZero?feature=guide
-J.
I wish that the Playsport had A/V inputs on it,like the Aiptek cameras do.I use it to transfer video from an old camcorder(Hi8 mm).
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