Hi, i want to buy a digital camcorder for taking video of my test rig. In my experiments the light conditions are bad, i mean i will taking videos of rotating disc frozen by strobe light. During this i will have no other lights except for the flashing strobe. Thus i am looking for something which is capable of taking good videos under bad lighting and has good compactability with PC and about 200X digital zoom. Any suggestion please. cheers
I have the Sony Handycam DCR-DVD92, it takes nice video in the dark as long as you are up close, works really well on reflective material. There is an option for night mode on the camera. The camera has 20X optical zoom and 800X digital zoom. I am not sure how this would work with a strobe light. This camera takes good videos even on medium quality setting. For the pc compatability with this cam you need a dvd drive in your computer. You finalize the disc in the camcorder and then watch the video on the computer like a regular dvd movie.
Hmmm... For your purpose you will need a cam that has a lot of manual settings, like shutter speed, exposure etc. to get the stroboscope footage work out well. This rules out many Sony models, because most of them lack manual control. Also, son't expect too much from 200x zoom; the image will be pixels blown up to the size of big squares...
Borrow a Sony PD170. It has all the manual settings and 1 lux light sensitivity. Mine has done everthing very well.Hei lung
