Hi, i am new to these forums. My only real experience with camcorders is that i have an old from 2000 panasonic vhsc and a canon zr85 that was given to me. I am trying to find a good camera to use for my church as we video the messages, edit and upload or drop off at a local tv station who then play them on sunday evening. 1. we need a hard drive rather then dvd or tapes.digital, hd is optional 2. a mic input that we can connect the mic lapel into or connect it through the sound board. 3. $300-$600 usd if possible.If less that's also great. If more, it depends on how much better it is. 4. with the new digital tv coming up in february, i assume that everything will be in wide screen. But do i need a camera that does full screen and widescreen? 5. where is a good place to shop for camcorders and get reviews? 6. I assume that a 2 hour record time would be plenty. But i dont know what you can do or how much hard drive is needed. We shoot the video from about 20 feet away. Our current camcorder only has a built in mic and picks up all the sound in the room. We use adobe premiere to edit the video's, but i assume that all camcorders out put in avi/dv 2. (i think thats the format) What are good brands and what should i avoid? i have heard that canon are some of the better and better priced camcorders. Thanks for your help. Please let me know if you need more info.
Hey there, So far I have done a-lot of research for you but no specific good model I found. But I know that Sony and Panasonic are really good. Actually I highly recommend going to places to shop like Costco, Frys, Best Buy, Circuit City. Preferably Costco since they usually bring in the best gadgets in the market. Also give http://www.compusa.com a try and/or http://www.newegg.com Good luck!
Wow, thanks for the reply. I had given up hope of recieving an answer I had looked through most of those places. I just want sure as to what to look for in a camera, or if they had sd/hd in one. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1109213
Your limited budget of $300-600 suggests that a miniDV tape-based video camera is the best choice. Some of these cameras will do 16:9 recording for digital, but that is often only by letter boxing the top and bottom of the screen to look 16:9 but, in fact, devoting some video resolution to black bars. With your budget, stay with 4:3 and let TVs "stretch" the picture. Advantages of miniDV: 1) low cost; 2) high quality recording; 3) editing software is inexpensive and becoming more reliable; 4) compatibility with computers with FireWire inputs for capture. Disadvantages of miniDV: 1) transfer to a computer hard drive is in real-time; 2) some software drops frames and may lock up. Camcorders using flash or hard drive storage are far more expensive and use MPEG-4 or similar compression that requires more expensive software for editing. The advantage they have is that data transfers are much faster. However, since expense is a factor, you might want to devote your dollars to an inexpensive miniDV camcorder and a wireless lapel microphone that records through your mixing board to a hard drive. (This will clean up the sound and avoid recording motor noise from the camcorder as well as ambient room noise.) Combine the audio track with the video in your editing software. A skilled editor can produce excellent results inexpensively this way more easily than using the latest but still clumsy technology. Canon, Panasonic, and Sony make the best camcorders in any of the formats according to tests I've read and my own experience.
These guys here already helped me out. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1109213 I ended up with the canon fs11. It came with a 16gb sd card and only cost $300 at walmart. I researched and i wasnt even going to bother going there to look as i didnt want walmart quality but a guy that was helping to look for cameras went there and found it for $200 cheaper then any where else localy. Online i found it for $360 usd. Imho a minidv is an almost unusable camera. Horrible video quality. That is what we were currently using, also i have my own minidv. plus as you mentioned the real time transfer rate takes up way too much of my time.My old year 2000 vhsc is has 40% better quality in any light conditions then any 2007 that i have seen, and i only paid $100 for that new, though it is only analog. Good advice on the aspect of conecting the mic through the sound board, but there again it would add more time and effort then it would be worth. (compared to the camera we found)The fs11's audio is great for our needs and has a mic input. mono/stereo. It also does 4:3 or 16:9. It is good to know that canon, sony and panasonic make good cameras as i am going to try to pick up a cheap hd camera this summer for my own personal use, so i wont need anything high quality as i never abuse my equipment. Thanks all for your replies.
