What Movie/Video Camera Should I Get?

[fobotcso]

Help get me into the video age please.

I've never had a movie or video camera; I've found still photography challenging, rewarding and expensive enough. I do have an Olympus C-1400 L digital camera.

But I realised how far I am behind in this aspect of technology when my son-in-law produced his new, tiny digital still camera at Christmas and proceeded to take a 10 second movie clip of the granddaughters which we uploaded (10MB) to my PC using a card reader over USB and which he then uploaded to his Web Page while we watched. And there they were, those girls, complete with sound, on the Internet! It all took about 20 minutes from start to finish.

So Mrs Fob and I have decided that we want to lash out and take a digital video camera on our lifetime post retirement cruise. But what sort? Tape, solid state, editable, take stills as well? I won't say cost is no object, but as its our first and last device of this nature, we may as well "do it up brown".

Please could you say what you have that is good; also what you would like to have if you could. What tips have you got born of experience? Of course, I shall want to put a clip or two on the Web.

[FL310]

There is a bit more than just the cam...unfortunately.
I run one of the latest Panasonic DV cams with plenty of zoom etc.
The cam has a good range of optical zoom which is important. The digital zoom is a nice feature, you need a tripod (expensive one to keep the cam steady) and the picture becomes cluttered because the pixels become squared...
It takes stills, nice feature...
To do something with your video you need a video input device, a tv card with appropriate input and output sockets, a connection to the sound card etc...
And you need a video recorder to tape everything after you have edited your movie.
The Panasonic cam needs extra software to download still pictures which can be taken from any frame of your movie.
If you buy the cam in US or in Asia, your system may be able to record as well, this is not allowed in Europe as this changes the cam into a video recorder and this imposes some extra tax in several countries. I am told it is only a software change...but who knows.
The quality of the DV tapes are good, take the ones with the red flap as they have memory for the elapsed time etc.
My total investment was about £3.500 as I found it required to put an scsi adapter and a 9 GB scsi drive in my PC to provide faster dataflow and to avoid gaps etc...
Yes, I would do it again but, as an information aside, I use this system rarely for private issues...

[AquaPlane]

Fob,

I have a Panasonic Mini DV camera, and use the IEEE1394 FireWire connection to my PC. No sound card required, no video grabber required, just a FireWire port. These are about £80 for a PC card. This allows fully digital transfer from Cam to PC and back again, so the edit is all digital with no loss, unlike with conventional capture cards. A fast HDD is required, the modern large ATA-33 IDE drives are more than adequate. The bigger capacity of the drive, the faster they work. Look for a minimum of 20GB.

To get DV in onto the cam, I had to plug in a serial cable from the still transfer kit that came with my cam and run a program that switched DV-in on. Mine does stills, but only at PAL TV resolution (720 pixels x 625 lines?). There is a Sony cam that has a megapixel CCD that allows for higher resolution captures (1024 or 1280 I think).

Not sure what FL310 is on about regarding different tapes recording additional timebase information. The information on DV is all encoded into a single stream, so if it works on one tape, it should work on them all.

My cam is a couple of years old now, and was £1200 when I got it. It's an NV-EX1.

Aq

[fobotcso]

Thanks to both of you. Food for thought. Got to do some reading. Meanwhile, any other ideas from my fellow techno freaks?

[spannersatcx]

I too have a Panasonic DV video camera, and I must say it is good. Apart from the camera itself I also go a IEEE1394 firewire card that allows DV capturing I also got a dedicated HDD 30GB total cost £250. As mentioned DV cameras bought in the UK/EU are not DV in enabled in other words you can capture the movie onto your PC edit it in sofware and capture frames/stills add effects and transitions etc, but you can't output it back into the camera. You can however buy whats called a widget http://www.datavision.co.uk/acatalog/dvwidred.jpg http://www.datavision.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_DV_in_enablers_1.html costs around £80 and this converts the camera to DV in and out so you can tape back to the DV camera and then transfer the footage to a normal VCR.

[Squiddley]

Hello,

There is practically an overload in information about DV cams, and I'd thoroughly recommend a good search engine like Google. Everyone has their favourite, mine being the Canon MV20i that I bought last year.

I have read that some models (don't know which) have the DV in/out port present, but it is disabled. Enabling can be done with some sort of button pressing combination, and others need a bit of wiring which could be a simple job. Could be risky though.

Sizewise, I would cauiton against going for the smallest, lightest, most pocket-sized camera, because it can be difficult to hold and manage the various buttons, knobs and dials. It might look good, but if you're either ham fisted or have big hands like I do, it will be a hindrance.

Depending on your personal use/need, I'd also suggest not bothering about having the digital still function. My thinking is that these models that have cards for stills are good, BUT all they are basically are frame captures, which you can do on the PC. Afterall, it IS primarily a video camera. If you have a reasonable software package and IEEE1394 setup, you will be able to get good "photos" from the video.

Be wary of digital zoom!! It's all well and good being able to zoom up to 200 or more times, but the shake will be terrible and the picture blurred/pixelated. I usually have it disabled, to prevent going too far. 10x optical zoom is usually sufficient for me. A tripod is a must in this case, and an "ought to have" anyway. Any one will do, as the socket is universal for still/video cameras.

Batteries !! Essential to buy spare(s) of a higher capacity than that which comes with the camera. My Canon came with a small lithium ion one that looks nice and compact, but it only powers for about 45mins without using the LCD. Get larger capacity ones to avoid losing power at the wrong moment!

Another heads-up is about the battery charger. Maybe nit-picky, but very annoying for me! The Canon arrangement is three pieces : a box like thing to attach the batteries to, a cable to the mains and another to the camera. It has a "fake battery" shape to attach to the camera. Now you can charge 1 or 2 batteries, BUT one after the other and NOT simultaneously. Also, if you are powering the camera from the mains, the batteries will not recharge until you disconnect the camera powering cable. I hope that makes sense! Therefore you have to wait twice as long to charge up, and that can't happen if you're using the camera. Minor quibble perhaps, but I don't like it.

An IEEE1394 card and cable has been mentioned, and I'd add that it's essential, as the "normal" PC download can make for HUGE files for even a small video clip. Another heads-up...don't buy an incompatible card thinking software will make it work. I did that with a Pinnacle Studio DV (NTSC) from Canada, assuming that I could just use the European drivers to make it work. Alas, it doesn't, so my 70% saving is now an ornament! Stupid thing to do :) I'm planning to have another go, but with PAL this time hehe, and I have seen good things about the ADS Pyro card. As with the Camera, there's plenty of choice, so search, read reviews and tailor your budget etc.

Whatever you go for will give excellent results, hope this is some help.

Cheers.

[fobotcso]

Many thanks to all of you for valuable comments. I liked very much the look of the Panasonic NV-EX3B and its specification - it's the successor to the NV-EX1. The Web price was as low as £899.

Given that I have a Sony Laptop with the Memory Stick socket and all the other Bells and Whistles that match the camera and that the software is already there, I took a look at their products. The PC110E won my heart with its USB port, IEEE 1394 DV in and out, stills (sorry Squid!) because I may not take my still camera, and the mega-pixel CCD.

The best bit was the price. Listed all over at £1495, it was on sale at the local London Camera Exchange for £1399. The http://www.askelectronics.co.uk price was £1299. John Lewis is my favourite shop for kit like this as they offer extended warranty at not extra cost - in this case two years. Their price, however was £1495. So I asked whether they would match the price of askelectronics and they did!

So I'm a very happy bunny with new kit that has lots of buttons to press and wires to plug in and it goes together with the laptop like cheese and pickles. I take the points about an IEEE 1394 card for the big main PC and a larger dedicated HDD. More paper rounds to do before I can get those though.

I'll catch up with all the technical stuff later, but I've already uploaded an "avi" clip to the Web as a trial, but it's much too big and slow to use. Slimmed down MPEG is probably what'll have to be used. Thanks again.

[xsimba]

fobotcso

now that you've had some time to play with your new toy do you have any good or bad words to say about it? I too am looking to buy this model after a great write up in Personal Computer World in the June edition.

A recommendation either way would be helpful.

Many thanks

[fobotcso]

xsimba, I'll start with a quick positive response now and add some detail later.

I've been delighted with almost all aspects. The quality of the digital video is excellent and the range of features (I've tried most of them) enough for anyone.

On the ergonomics there are a few things that could be better:

The Optical Zoom is a bit awkward to operate smoothly. It's worth practising zooming and getting the grip of the camera right. I've not tried the digital zoom (other than a quick look) and can't see when I'd want to use it.

I've hardly used the Remote Control; but the receptor is on the front of the camera so, if you want to zoom while mounted on a tripod, you have to be close enough to the camera to touch it - which of course -induces shake. Or you could be in front and use the IR remote but then you'd be preoccupied with keeping out of shot.

I particularly like the memory stick for stills and for short mpeg clips that you can feed straight onto a CD or Web Site.

I've found it fairly intuitive to copy off the DV (digital video) from tape to the PC, edit and construct a "Production", copy that back to the camera and then copy off the DV to a VCR and make a standard video tape.

About 11GB of DV yielded a 20 min video tape!!! You have to be ruthless.

You can, of course, play the tape in the camera straight onto the TV screen and get excellent quality.

No regrets - greatly pleased and would buy it again.

[This message has been edited by fobotcso (edited 27 June 2001).]

[xsimba]

Many thanks, always good to get feedback from a real user rather than just a magazine.

Looks like I'm going to have to dust off the wallet!

[PPRuNe Towers]

Since this thread first kicked off there have been a few changes in the market.

DV in is now becoming a much more common feature so all the wangles and widgets are a thing of the past with many consumer models.

Secondly if you're interested in getting into DV and your machine is perfectly capable of doing all your present work but not video have a look at a Mac.

Firewire built in. Standard (cheap)PC hard drives and memory and a DV editing suite incorporated into the the operating system.

Yep, it comes with the computer along with complete built in audio/data editing and CD burning software. The operating system also links you automatically to off-line storage and readybuilt websites for stills and streaming video all completely fee of charge.

I've been a PC man for 15 years now - can build one in 90 minutes - and after a great deal of research have bought a Mac portable system. I've never, ever seen Danny look quite so smug........

Regards from the Towers
Rob Lloyd
[email protected]

[spannersatcx]

Background Noise see my post towards the top, you can DV-INenable with a hardware widget. And the price has just come down as well.