Topic: Mini DV cam recommendations?

[silverbullet]

....plus with some cams you can't shoot in widescreen..not sure about the hc series....

Yes, the Sony HC series can shoot widescreen. I think the earlier HC models wasn't a "true" widescreen though but I couldn't tell a difference. The HC90 does shoot "true" widescreen...so I've been told. I like shooting widescreen to help crop out the crowd when taping near the back with only one camera. You can also always crop out that later in the editing process and make it look widescreen which may even be a better option. I don't shoot raw widescreen much anymore unless its just family vacation/birthday stuff.

[BayTaynt3d]

I own a Panny GS400, and it totally rocks. It's a little expensive for a "consumer" cam (lists for $1500 or so, but you can find cheaper), but it comes with a TON of pro features like: 3 CCDS each with a decent size chip (bigger than typical consumer cams, 3 bigger CCDs make a HUGE difference IMO), manual override for everything if you want it (manual focus, manual zoom, manual white balance, manual aperture/exposure, manual speed, etc. all through a neat "multi-purpose" jog-ring around the lens), a seperate mini mic-in for audio (for this board, that might sound cheesy on the audio front, but you'll be hard-pressed to even get audio in at all on most consumer cams, and it had three modes: AGC, Manual with limiting, and Manual), AE Lock (which freakin' rules, just stay in automode, frame your shot, then switch to AE Lock to ensure everything stays put the way you want it to), TRUE widescreen NTSC that uses a larger area on the CCD chips (not scaled or zoomed, watch out for that because a lot, and I mean MOST, consumer "widescreen" cams just crop and zoom or mask to letterbox, this cam doesn't do any of that crap), and finally, it has OPTICAL image stabalization (which also freagin' totally rules compared to most consumer cams that use electronic stabalization, I can't even tell you how much true perfect optical stabalization rules). Anyway, thought I'd make a plug for that cam because I personally own one, and on many levels it almost is on par with much higher-end prosumer cams like the GL/XL series (not quite I know, but in some areas it's actually better) for less than half the price and more than half the physical size. There are other GS-series Panny cams that are cheaper with less features but still are pretty nice too, but the GS400 is a masterpiece as far as consumer cams go (although as with any gadget, it does have some minor annoyances here and there, but overall, that was $1500 very well spent as far as I am concerned. You can find a ton of info from actual hands-on users about these Panny cams here:

http://www.pana3ccduser.com

And if you want to see some examples of footage caught with the GS400 (remember these are highly compressed for the Web, so they don't even come close to showing you the true quality of the DV this thing caps), check out some of my blog posts here:

-- DEAD LINK, SORRY --


-- Taint

[sabre]

And if you want to see some examples of footage caught with the GS400 (remember these are highly compressed for the Web, so they don't even come close to showing you the true quality of the DV this thing caps), check out some of my blog posts here:
http://www.sfblogger.org

Great post! Do you happen to have any concert footage taken with your GS400?

[BayTaynt3d]

Sorry, nope. But that is one of the reasons I'm gearing up an audio rig -- I'll be taping the audio seperatly from the video. I will say this though, one more point that might be worth mentioning is that if you plan on doing a lot of LOW LIGHT video taping, you should really do your homehome because consumer cams in general SUCK in the low light category, but some are a lot better/worse than others (this is one of the weaker points of my cam, the GS400, but like I said, low light is rough on most consumer cams).

[BuddyGoodness]

I was considering buying either a Canon Optura 600, a sony HDR-HC1, or a Panasonic PV-GS400.  I like that the Sony has a good low light rating (a majority of my recording will be of shows) but I don't own anything HD and I wonder if it is kinda pointless to get it when the quality of the image would be downgraded upon being burned to dvd.  Which one should I get?

[Mungo]

can't say much about HDV, but about DV:

If you need low light performance, you can't avoid buying a sony product though the picture's a bit artificial and "DV-like" under normal light conditions. Don't like that, it's my personal opinion.
Panasonic's 3-Chip-models offer best picture quality I think.
I for myself have a 3-year old canon XM2. The American model name is GM2 (?). Nice picture for a good price. When you switch on the mic attenuator und plug in a wireless device (Sennheiser Evolution Wireless Portable) with a high mic output level the result is a very nice low noise sound. I'm happy with my XM2.