The Owl Seeking Camcorder Wisdom

[The Owl]

OK, here goes:

I'm looking at buying a camcorder in the next few months as I'm getting into creating video accompaniments for some of my original music, and indulging my comedic jones every so often too.

The things is, I know little to nothing about this rapidly changing consumer product, so what I'm trying to figure out is:

1) Consumer or Pro-Sumer level? I ain't going to Hollywood anytime soon. Most bang for the buck

2) Record to DVD-R or 8mm digital video tape (do these still exist?)

3) Good brands? Ones to avoid (although SONY is tops on my Avoid Like The Plague List for numerous reasons)

My immediate goal is to be able to gather footage for home created videos which of course can be edited and altered beyond recognition if need be.

The Owl Awaits Your Wisdom-------------

[MakiSupaStar]

Originally Posted by The Owl

OK, here goes:

I'm looking at buying a camcorder in the next few months as I'm getting into creating video accompaniments for some of my original music, and indulging my comedic jones every so often too.

The things is, I know little to nothing about this rapidly changing consumer product, so what I'm trying to figure out is:

1) Consumer or Pro-Sumer level? I ain't going to Hollywood anytime soon. Most bang for the buck

2) Record to DVD-R or 8mm digital video tape (do these still exist?)

3) Good brands? Ones to avoid (although SONY is tops on my Avoid Like The Plague List for numerous reasons)

My immediate goal is to be able to gather footage for home created videos which of course can be edited and altered beyond recognition if need be.

The Owl Awaits Your Wisdom-------------

Look into the ones that record to an HD. They are nice. I have a Panasonic (A Japanese model) which 5 years later is still kicking butt. I love mine. Look at Consumer Digest or some comparison sites. I found that Sony was good quality, but really overpriced for what you get. A big thing is compatibility on the backend. How easy is it to get it off your camera and into a medium for editing?

[Pilgrim]

If you don't like Sony, then 8mm Digital is pretty much out. I'm not sure why - in my experience Sony makes the best tape transports.

Panasonic gear has always been good and durable for me - not quite as well-featured as Sony, but good.

[TrooperFarva]

I purchased a High Definition camcorder for my father about 8 months ago. I decided on the Canon HV20. It has unbelievable picture quality. It can record at 30fps or 24, for more of a movie look.

The camcorders that record to a hard drive are convenient, you can get hours upon hours of video on the hard drive. The trade off is that the video is compressed as it's recorded, so the playback isn't quite as sharp as camcorders that record to a digital tape.

[jiant.]

The JVC Everio series seemed pretty decent when I was working in an electronic store last year. I imagine those are still available, they're like what Maki was talking about, they have built in hard drives (30 gig when I last saw them, that got you 7-37 hours of recording, depending on what quality you recorded at.) So you might want to check those out.

[Marcury]

I'm a big fan of Panasonic cameras. The prosumer SDs have the best look, (particularly when you use their cine gamma) and they can shoot 24 fps. Sony's are the standard though.

These days there are a number of good HD cameras from SONY, Canon and Panasonic @ the $1,000 mark.

Even if you can get one you don't want 8mm. For one thing I don't know of any 8mm cans that have firewire transfer so if you want to do any digital editing it will be a PITA. MiniDV is the way to go or the newer cameras that shoot to SD cards.

If your going to spend the money (no matter what you want to shoot) it's best to buy the most up to date technology as it will stay current longer.

[The Owl]

Thanks guys, these few posts have been extremely helpful, the onboard hard drive looks VERY attractive to me.

[Pilgrim]

I agree that Digital-8 is somewhat outmoded. However, a number of the Sony Digital-8 camcorders have firewire, and although mine isn't a top of the line model, it does. Mine also works as an analog-to-digital converter, so i can connect an analog source to the camcorder, feed it through and use the camcorder to convert it to digital. Pretty sneaky.

In fact, when I plug in the firewire cable my (Sony) desktop completely remote controls the camcorder. I have complete tape transport and edit control from the desktop as well as audio and video transfer. I believe mine is a Sony TRV-340 from around 2000 and it's working fine.

But I bought the Digital-8 format because I had both 8mm and Hi-8 tapes from previous generations of camcorders, and it was backward-compatible with both those formats. I have now used the camcorder and firewire interface to transfer that footage onto DVD for longer-term storage.

If I were buying a camcorder today, I'd buy one that recorded onto a more robust medium like disc or flash card. Tape is always a bit fragile.

[Marcury]

Originally Posted by Pilgrim

I agree that Digital-8 is somewhat outmoded. However, a number of the Sony Digital-8 camcorders have firewire, and although mine isn't a top of the line model, it does.

I didn't realize there were 8mms with firewire. last one I used was before Firewire even existed.

Mine also works as an analog-to-digital converter, so i can connect an analog source to the camcorder, feed it through and use the camcorder to convert it to digital. Pretty sneaky.

In fact, when I plug in the firewire cable my (Sony) desktop completely remote controls the camcorder. I have complete tape transport and edit control from the desktop as well as audio and video transfer.

True of any Firewire capable camera I've ever used.

But I bought the Digital-8 format because I had both 8mm and Hi-8 tapes from previous generations of camcorders, and it was backward-compatible with both those formats.

Makes absolute sense in that case.

If I were buying a camcorder today, I'd buy one that recorded onto a more robust medium like disc or flash card. Tape is always a bit fragile.

+1

[The Owl]

Well, after some research, I've decided that when the time comes to buy, I'm going for something that records to an onboard hard-drive like the Panasonic or JVC Everio series. One of the Panasonic camcorders I looked at has a 42X optical/2000X digital setup, 40 Gig onboard hard drive and all the goodies I need for a long while. It'll probably be a month or 2 before I buy but that's what looks good at this point, unless something else better comes along.

[The Golden Boy]

Our little girl had her 4th grade talent show.

Before the show- I saw a dude with a bluish/silver briefcase. It was a sizable briefcase.

During the show- he sat a couple rows in front of me. And out came a 1988 Sony video camera the size of a frickin' house. It was awesome. So I pulled out my little Sony video camera- and it wouldn't power up. This dude with a 20 year old video camera was going, and my relatively new camera 1/8th the size wouldn't work.

[Pilgrim]

Originally Posted by The Golden Boy

This dude with a 20 year old video camera was going, and my relatively new camera 1/8th the size wouldn't work.

Doesn't that just frost yer cookies? However, as I said earlier, as far as I'm concerned, Sony DOES make the best tape transports in the biz. But that gent must know how to take care of batteries if his are still functional!

[The Golden Boy]

Originally Posted by Pilgrim

But that gent must know how to take care of batteries if his are still functional!

Can they rebuild old batteries like that?

[disenchant]

Well, as a semi-pro I love my Panasonic. It has a great lens, a Leica Dicomar (Sony's Carl Zeiss lens is great too), and it's a 3-chip camera which is fine for regular TV broadcast, but not HD.

HD takes up a lot of space, so if you're going to edit in HD, you need a lot of space!

The pros still use Mini DV, that's what we use here in our studio. I don't trust hard drives, they crash so easily. I've never in six years had any trouble with a Mini DV tape.

Panasonic is awesome! The only trouble I've had is capturing video on my computer with my Panasonic that has been recorded by a different camera. Evidently my Panasonic hates Sony

[El Kabong]

I do wedding videos for my living as well as shoot the occasional Indie film for groups in the area and I went with JVC HD-110's and HD-10's as my cameras. Both of these are out of your price range, but I know that JVC makes some lower end cameras that are getting great reviews, so check them out as well.

I had been shooting with Panasonic gear (dvx-100) before i went to high def, and IMO the jvc chips look the nicest/ most filmic. Panny makes good stuff but the HVX series of cameras have a very electric/ digital look to them. Not to mention they are not true HD but rather use a 540line chip and upconvert it to get a 720i image then deinterlace and overscan to get to 1080p... IMO it looks like junk on a big screen.

Originally Posted by TrooperFarva

The camcorders that record to a hard drive are convenient, you can get hours upon hours of video on the hard drive. The trade off is that the video is compressed as it's recorded, so the playback isn't quite as sharp as camcorders that record to a digital tape.

FYI if you are recording to HDV or really any codec you are compressing the heck out of your video.. hard drive or tape it matters not.