Video Camera

[grand_witch]

I have thought for a while I quite fancy a Video Camera as I am getting married (next year) and going to the US for three weeks on hoiday (this year), a kind of road trip around San Fransisco. This has openned up a whole new world of abreviations and mind boggling Jargon. All I want is something that I can plug into my pc and edit then burn to DVD. I mistakenly asked for assistance in Jessops and was immediatley shown to the most expensive one in the shop £900+.

Which should I get?

HI8 or Digital?

Any Ideas on brands or the best place to get it?

[Stoo]

Digital

Firewire, widescreen capable, decent optical zoom (forget about digital zoom, it's crap, so ignore anything that says "500x zoom!" etc), high CCD numbers (affects the resolution), and make sure it's from one of the decent brands

Okay.. here's a few to mull over..

:Top End:
(£756) http://www.prcdirect.co.uk/PRC/PRC.f...ducts/NVGS200B
(£650) http://www.prcdirect.co.uk/PRC/PRC.f...oducts/DCRHC85
(£558) http://www.prcdirect.co.uk/PRC/PRC.f...oducts/MVX250I
(£535) http://www.prcdirect.co.uk/PRC/PRC.f...ucts/DCRPC109E
(£525) http://www.prcdirect.co.uk/PRC/PRC.f...ducts/NVGS120B
(£443) http://www.prcdirect.co.uk/PRC/PRC.f...roducts/MVX200
(£377) http://www.prcdirect.co.uk/PRC/PRC.f...products/GRD93
:Low End:

Much below that you tend to drop on features and quality (Lower resolution, odd formats etc etc), especially if you want to get the best from burning to dvd

For those with more money than sense: http://www.prcdirect.co.uk/PRC/PRC.f...ucts/DCRTRV950

For those that want to build a film studio: http://www.prcdirect.co.uk/PRC/PRC.f...roducts/DMXL1S

[Rave]

All I want is something that I can plug into my pc and edit then burn to DVD. I mistakenly asked for assistance in Jessops and was immediatley shown to the most expensive one in the shop £900+.

Where abouts in London are you? I used to work for Jessops and unfortunately the London stores tend to have a high staff turnover, so there's more of a chance you'll get an inexperienced salesman. I don't work for them any more, and I don't have a great deal of loyalty to them, but you might as well buy from them seeing as they'll generally match prices off the internet. If you give them another try, try and collar a store manager or assistant manager as they're a lot more likely to know their stuff. Alternatively, just politely ask to speak to their camcorder specialist, they'll generally point you to someone knowledgeable.

Anyway, as for recommendations, there's really very little point bothering with Hi8 nowadays, get Mini-DV. Any mini DV camera (from £280 up) will allow you to connect to your PC via FireWire and upload the footage for editing. Some cameras have "DV-in" but you only need that if you want to send the footage back to the camera after editing; if you're burning to DVD it's irrelevant unless you want a backup master copy on DV tape too.

At the low end (£3-400) I'd probably recommend the Canon MV700 series of cameras (the 750i has an SD card slot for photos). If you're spending £5-600 you've a lot of choice and it'll be hard to get a bad camera. Just buy on size and features vs. price, Sony, Panasonic, JVC and Canon all do good models. If you've £700ish to spend, Panasonic do a '3CCD' model for about that price, it uses, um, 3 CCDs to step the picture quality up a notch.

I don't recommend DVD camcorders, MPEG-2 compression isn't so suited to constant bitrate recording, and you'll probably suffer quality loss during editing too.

Rich :¬)

[scottyman]

miniDV- little sony DCRHC20E - cut down version of the ultra portable units we used to use as cutaway cams on shoots.
DV IN-OUT isn't strictly a requirement, but makes life easier (add's to the cost, as there's an additional european tax for dv i/o) but it means you get some additional functionality.
I do like Panasonic units, but mainly because they've all been 3CCD cut down professional models. I used to have an XL1, but frankly, it's overkill!
The Canon MVX200i is a great little camera - hadn't seen that on the UK market when I was last looking to replace broken/stolen kit - and that, or it's little sister MVX200 is a very good option.

BTW - DO NOT EVER USE CINEMA WIDESCREEN MODE! seriously, it's just a mask. The Canon units both support "proper" widescreen and cinema mode. You'll have to spend hours re-rendering footage to get it into proper widescreen otherwise! Uses standard PAL picture aspect ratio and a mask. Saves processor time.

Scotty

[IBM]

Just avoid any of the Sony propriatery MicroMV formats....I've got two of the Sony models and althought they're tiny and full of gadgets and gizmos, it's not worth it for the drop in vid quality and the hastles capturing the stuff....

[subucni]

For those with more money than sense: http://www.prcdirect.co.uk/PRC/PRC.f...ucts/DCRTRV950

damn, thats a good price for that in my opinion

If you've £700ish to spend, Panasonic do a '3CCD' model for about that price

if you've got that much to spend that sounds like a bargain to me,

3CCD chip camera's give better quality as rather than having one chip to convert all the images, they use 3chips, basically one for each colour (red, green and blue) so you get a better quality picture.

but if you're looking for cheaper, the larger the chip size, the better basically and like others have said, you can't go wrong with the main brands like canon, sony, panasonic and jvc. they all tend to use nice lenses

[Moonshade]

Digital, of course ! What else, duh!

[Rave]

if you've got that much to spend that sounds like a bargain to me,

3CCD chip camera's give better quality as rather than having one chip to convert all the images, they use 3chips, basically one for each colour (red, green and blue) so you get a better quality picture.

I had a look on Kelkoo and you can get the GS120 3CCD model for a little over £500!Not sure if it's an old model or something....

This thread reminds me that my lovely little Sony PC1 was pinched from my mum's house a week ago. Can't afford to replace it either. If anyone gets offered a nicked one in a pub, do me a favour and kneecap the bastard.

Rich :¬)

[grand_witch]

Thanks for all the advice