First a little background: I've been shooting stereo (3D) photography for a number of years, the last two years with a pair of Canon A650s mounted side-by-side and synchronized with a customized version of CHDK, called StereoDataMaker. (CHDK is a hack for many Canon point-and-shoot cameras that loads from the SD card and replaces the firmware to add a lot of cool features like motion detection and lets you run Basic scripts to do things like exposure and focus bracketing and time-lapses. It also adds a remote trigger through the USB port, which was adapted by SDM to fire two or more cameras with a high degree of synchronization, which you need for action stereo photos. I typically get 1/15000th to 1/20000th sec synch with the A650s, a small fraction of the exposure time, so shots almost always look perfectly synched.)
Anyway, when I started taping local bands a few months ago with a Zoom H4n, I thought it would be fun to do some YouTube videos with the A650s shooting 640x480 video, which they do reasonably well. I put one on a tall tripod near the sound board and carry the other on a monopod.
It's been a lot of fun so I've been thinking of getting a pair of Canon HD camcorders. But when I saw that the $300 SX200 and the $200 SD780 shoot 720p 30fps video (and also shoot 12mp image-stabilized stills and can run CHDK/SDM), I decided to get a pair of SX200s and give them a try as video cameras. Following is a sample, shot in
very bad stage light -- low level and lots of red -- in case anyone here has been curious about what you might be able to do with these cheap P&S cameras:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVZ91Mtg-sw&hd=1I haven't shot any bands in better light yet, but of course the cameras do much better with good lighting. I think they're fine for YouTube HD videos, and I was pleased enough with the results that I now have an SD780 on the way to add a third camera. (Adorama has refurbs for $150 with a 1 year warranty, which puts them in about the same price range as the Flips and clones, but I'm expecting it to beat the crap out of a Flip.) It's an ELPH-sized camera with the same CCD and processor as the SX200, just fewer features. If it turns out to be a decent camera, I'll get a second one so I can shoot 4-camera video and also have a very compact stereo pair. It's possible to shoot 3D video with either pair, but with video the synching is hit-and-miss in the current version of SDM (and when it's not good then 3D videos with a lot of action can be hard on the eyes), but the developer is trying to find a way to make it better.
One limitation with the stock cameras is that you can't zoom while shooting video: Canon disables the zoom because the motor records very loudly on the videos. However, CHDK/SDM provides an over-ride for that and lets you zoom, and since I'm not using the sound track from the cameras anyway, the motor noise is not a problem. (The zoom is a bit fast for my taste, so I don't really use it a lot. I do, however, use a lot of digital panning and zooming in the edit to make the videos a little less stagnant, especially for the camera that I'm not controlling. Even though the image is degraded a bit, I like the slowness and steadiness you can get, and I can also give more thought to how and when to use it than I seem to be capable of when I'm shooting.
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Of course, if you need 1080p for Blu-ray video, then these won't do, but for now I'm only interested in doing YouTube videos and 720p is the most you can make use of. Considering that I got the pair of SX200s for what I was expecting to pay for one Canon camcorder, and as a bonus I've got a new stereo camera rig that shoots great 12mp stills, I'm a happy camper.