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Which Digital Video Camera for Amateur Video?
Maznafein asks: "I'm about to leave the IT world, after just finishing a degree in audio engineering, and I'd like to start doing some A/V work on the side as I attempt to make the transition to a new career. I want to make a my first short film either in the late fall, or early spring. I want to do everything in the digital domain as I currently use Logic and Ableton Live on my power book. I have all the gear I need to use up to eight microphones and I can easily pick up some shot gun mics. I don't really know which [video camera] to go with. Like every geek I want the best resolution available other than that the only thing I know I'll need is it to be water resistant/proof, or be able to purchase a housing, for up to a 15 minute scene in the short film I am adapting. What should I go with?"
"I've always been a firm believer that to make it in any field you have to show that you want to do it. I currently write my own tracks (bangin' german techno) and engineer/mix down local artists (rock, pop and hip hop) on the side already. I just have yet to get into the nitty gritty of doing film production."
I shot this on a Canon ZR40 and edited in iMovie. I'm sure it's way under the level the article is talking about, but everyone is impressed with the quality.
Mind you, the Mpeg version on the internet has a fraction of the quality the fill DV version does.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
You can try Survivor, Baywatch or the The Simple Life
Anyone know of a nice, decent and relatively cheap ( as in, below 500 euro ) video camera? Preferably digital, but I don't really know much about cameras so before someone starts screaming that cameras with tapes are by far superior, please enlighten me. Anyways, I'm looking for a simple camera. High resolution, perfect quality and all that are nice, but I just want to record simple things with it. I'm by no means whatsoever a professional and spending 2000 euro on a camera still makes me a crap cameraman. I just want something nice and simple for average home stuff. Record family, stuff, dad's shiny motorbike he's oh-so-proud of, mom's new creative stuff, friends, etc.
So, anyone got a few nice suggestions regarding that? I'm open to all kinds of ideas, just with a few minor preferences, which are all open to discussion. I'd like it to store data on some sort of flash memory, preferably encoded in a rather normal format such as divx or xvid or whatever. Also, USB connections would be best, considering my current lack of firewire. Some simple video-editing program would be nice too, so I can recode/encode the video to mpeg2 and burn it on DVD afterwards.
So, if anyone got a suggestion as to what camera would be ideal and on which notions I'm horribly wrong, feel free to reply. Cheers!
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