Topic: video camera recommendation

[saxophoner]

a friend of mine was picking my head today about something i know nothing about.  he's looking for a good professional quality camera that he make movies of his hunting trips.  don't know whats gratifying about watching an animal die, just not my thing i guess, but i told him i knew of a place i could get some good info.  he was looking at a sony harddrive camera at bestbuy for $1K and i figured he could get something a little less expensive without suffering in quality.  i guess this thing needs to have some balls and can take minor abuse since its going to be out in the field.

thanks ahead

[saltman]

hard drive cameras are worthless.....  and only suited for the n00bist of all amateurs.  (Unless your talking firestore, etc.. which you're not).
Get a solid three chip camera with the largest chips you can afford (1/2", etc.)  You're not going to get quality HD in that price range so don't try.  Do some research into which cameras shoot the best in low light.  Any camera can shoot nice footage in the sun.  The darkness separates the good ones from the bad ones.

[greatape]

In that price range the Panasonic GS500 is a top choice for quality, except it only has 12x zoom.

[fanofthemule]

In that price range the Panasonic GS500 is a top choice for quality, except it only has 12x zoom.

good recommendation, i've got a couple of the pvgs300's and they're a great camera.  if you need more than 12X zoom, just buy a 2X lens for $30.

[dxtreme]

if he can spend $99 more, get the Canon HV20. It is high definition and more importantly, it can do 24p. 24p is a feature that makes the footage look like footage thats being shot with film camera. If he wants Std definition alone, the panasonic gs 500 is a very good choice. My production company owns one , we use it as a B cam.

The site to check on video cam is www.camcorderinfo.com

[kuuan]

first your friend should decide if he wants SD ( standard definition ) or HD ( high definition )

Nowadays mostly HD cams are sold, users often blissfully unaware that they will face big problems if they want edit. They record in highly compressed mpeg2 ( to harddisc, SD card or DVDs ) which is much more difficult to edit than the uncompressed AVI files of SD cams and thus are moslty aimed for consumers who do not want to edit but show their footage right away.
If you want to edit and do not want to spend big bucks for a top notch PC, a HD TV asf. go for a SD cam, the Panasonic GS500 being a very good choice, GS400 being the best choice, but it only can be found used.
If it should be HD which really does make footage with much better resolution rather go for socalled HDV cams ( usually Sony, but mostly they lack manual controls, even a mic in ), the best choice there seems to be the Canon HV20 which btw records to tapes! Because it CAN be edited with a top notch PC ( of course you always can downconvert to SD first as well ), not an AVDHC cam for which there still isn't any software out to edit it with.
If recorded sound is important mind that all HV cams also record the sound in highly compressed format, but SD cams in WAV!

[dxtreme]

panasonic gs500 is a very good camera. If you can swing it HD, the canon hv20 is the definite choice. Some hd cam can also shoot in SD. This might be helpful if you have a slower comp. HD is definitely the future, and you know sooner or later you are going to upgrade that comp anyway.