Wife wants a Digital Movie Camera

[davaglo]

Looking at a newapaper add is the expertise I have for digital movie cameras. Can anyone point me to a quality camera? I appreciate your advice and suggestions. Also, will I need to purchase software for minor editing? This camera will be used for vacations, grandbabies and family.

Thank you in advance.

Jerry

[Chris Sanderson]

Do yourself a favour: buy an iMac and a Canon DV cam on eBay. Macs come with superb silly-easy software for editing . . .

[Giedo]

I'm looking for the same thing. Allready got the imac...
Why DV? Is a DVD recording cam or harddisk not that bit more convenient? (when accepting the extra price to pay) And why Canon instead of a Sony digicam?
Thnks for any suggestions!

[Chris Sanderson]

DV has been the basic standard for the past five years, so the availability of good 2nd hand equipment is much better. Sure, if you want a new camera, recording onto a medium other than tape (solid-state or DVD-R) is more up-to-date. The only problem is that for more compressed formats than DV such as MPG2 or MPG4, your editing software and computer must deal with I frames, so the computing overhead is much larger. Convenience sometimes comes at a price . . .

CS

[jeffball]

Hello  Chris,
Another advice request.  I am looking at a really low end camera to take along on photography trips to create some web-delivered video to enhance my customers' experience.  I guess my criteria is a camera capable of easy download to a Macbook Pro, good enough for web-based quality, small and lightweight, and inexpensive enough to lose.  This is simply a supplement to my still-photography and will be web-based only.  Thanks for any advice you may have on this and thanks for the exceptional work on LLVJ.
Jeff

[Jonathan Wienke]

You might want to check out the Samsung SC-X105L or SC-X210L mini-camcorders. Video quality is not that great, but good enough for webcasts at 320x240, and these camcorders record directly to memory stick or SD cards. They are also extremely small and light, and built with a rubber armor coating. Mine survived a few months in Iraq with no problems at all.

[Ray]

For around US$1000 (street price) you should be able to get a Canon HV10. This is a very compact and lightweight high definition camera that captures 1920x1080i. It apparently has a few disadvantages such as poor mic, no HDMI outputs and records only on tape, but picture quality appears to be excellent according to the reviews I've read.

Isn't standard definition close to being obsolete? Even if you don't have an HD TV set, the images form a downsampled HD camcorder will look closer to true SD broadcast quality on an SD TV set.

[Chris Sanderson]

Isn't standard definition close to being obsolete? Even if you don't have an HD TV set, the images form a downsampled HD camcorder will look closer to true SD broadcast quality on an SD TV set.
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SD may be close to being obsolete but it is a higher quality than almost anything on the web. So if web is the destination, an SD capture system is a good place to start. If the 16:9 format is what is desired, HDV is great since as you say, the down-rezzed HDV>DV is the best looking DV around. But remember that media players like Apple's iPod have screens that are 4:3 and a 16:9 signal does not use their full screen real estate.

I have no real knowledege or experience with smaller video digicams but I will suggest that you won't go far wrong with almost anything by Canon or Sony . . .

Chris S

[jeffball]

Thanks Jonathan for the information.   That is exactly what I needed.  Thanks for your service as well.  
Jeff

You might want to check out the Samsung SC-X105L or SC-X210L mini-camcorders. Video quality is not that great, but good enough for webcasts at 320x240, and these camcorders record directly to memory stick or SD cards. They are also extremely small and light, and built with a rubber armor coating. Mine survived a few months in Iraq with no problems at all.
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[Jonathan Wienke]

You're welcome. Since I've got the JVC now, I'm thinking about selling my SC-X105L, which is last year's version of the SC-X210L. I still have the external camera, a 1GB memory stick, and all of the accessories. Everything works, but the main camera has some Iraqi moon dust in some of the crevices, and a few minor cosmetic scratches. PM me with an offer if you're interested.