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Rugged Mini-DV Camcorder for the Road?
step asks: "As part of my job, I (and my colleagues) spend weeks at a time on the road, doing science shows for high school students. To review our work, we carry DV camcorders to tape and watch our performances. Unfortunately, all the previous models we've tried haven't lasted more than 12 months on the road (and not from lack of care). When returned for repair we were told that they weren't faulty, just not up to the task.
We don't need a full feature camera, just solid reliable recording and playback. In fact, simple is probably better to accommodate the most users.
What experience has Slashdot had with camcorders? What's a good model that can handle lots of travel?"
Given the reasonable price of Mini-DV camcorders, you'd be better off purchasing two or three identical units and rotate their use. If something fails you can pull out the backup. You might also find it useful to record your work from different positions and edit them together.
Since you asked, I've had good experience with a hand-sized Sony DCR-PC9 -- it's been beat up but remains completely functional and reliable.
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD
... and bang on some of the display models for a while.
Good move. Go to a store and buy which ever camera you don't break. I'm guessing they will also make you pay for the ones you managed to break.
Sorry to break it to you, but you are not going to get a consumer product which lasts for more than a year under regular use unless you are very, very lucky - and I do mean luck.
Consumer products are designed to break so that you'll buy a new version a short time down the road. That's why all consumer products should be considered an expendable good. Surprise! Most new companies come out with a new product version at least anually - perfect timing for designed obsolecense!
If you want something that's rugged and repairable, you're going to have to purchase a device that costs enough to make repairing it economical for both you and the company - in other words, something that's very expensive and 'industrial'. It won't be easy to use.
Cheapest, best route is probably to keep slugging it out for the 'cheap' consumer brand stuff and hope for the best.
For what it's worth, both my brother and I have Canon Z40s. My brother has used his constantly for the last two years (well, quite often - a couple hours a week, I guess). It's a little body worn, but it still works fine. Mine works fine as well, and I like their product over what the others offer. *shrug*
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Don't spend large amounts of money, get the cheapest one you can find with reasonable features and quality and just allow for the fact that it needs to get replaced every so often. I'd much rather have to buy 10 $200 recorders instead of one $2000 which might get stolen misplaced or break in a fall. Get an expensive pair of sunglasses and you'll lose them in a week, get a cheap pair and you can't throw them away!!!
Sure, camcorders are fragile, but breaking one every 12 months? It sounds to me you'd do well to think more about how you're handling and packing them, whether you buy a rugged(ized) one or not.
I'm sorry for preaching and stating the obvious, but it seems to me that one has to deal with various fragile items on the road besides cameras, such as laptops, cell phones, the glasses you're wearing, etc.
Now things are engineered for disposability/cost rather than repairability.
Not if they're made for professionals. Which brings me to the question that must be asked - if you are shooting something as part of your job, why are you using a consumer-grade camcorder?
To the article submitter: my guess is when these repairmen told you that your cameras weren't "up to the task" that they also told you to buy a camcorder made for the task. There are many such models available. Go to any decent camera store (B&H in New York, for example) and look around. It's really not hard. Hell, B&H has a whole professional video category right there on their web site.
I have a feeling the question being asked was not actually "what camcorders are up to the task?" but rather "what camcorder can I get for no extra money that will give me professional level durability?" Sorry, but the fact is you do get what you pay for. Pro gear costs more because it lasts longer and can handle the extra abuse of being tossed around and used basically 24 hours per day. You can't go on the cheap and expect to use a consumer-level camera in a professional capacity (and that is exactly what you have previously tried to do - I'd have thought you'd have learned your lesson by now).
According to my numbers, a 60 minute miniDV tape is about 15 gigabytes. And is removable for multiple tapes, which is a far cry from 4 gigabytes.
Four gigabytes can only hold about 16 minutes worth of DV quality video. I imagine you could lengthen it by using MPEG-4 but there probably are compromises involved if you plan to do a lot of editing with it.
is that they record using MPEG-2 for compression instead of DV, which makes frame-by-frame editing a dicey proposition - have to convert back and forth.
+++ATH0
I dunno about that. They're a pain in the ass to use (for example, if you set the white balance and then adjust the aperture, you can't change the white balance again without undoing the aperture setting), and they don't really hold up all that well. My school gives them out to film students, and they're in crappy condition after only a couple of semesters of use--people complain about dropouts all the time, even though they're DVCAM and should be more or less immune to that (and that's not to mention all the other problems they've had with them).
If you want a really nice camera in that range, pick up a Canon GL2. Easy to use (put it in automatic mode and you're all set), but highly configurable if you need that capability as well. I've known people who have bought Sony cameras and liked them, but I've also known people who've bought them and regretted them. I've never met anyone (myself included) who has bought a Canon and regretted the purchase.
Whatever camera you get, make sure you put it in a Pelican case or equivalent waterproof case. I see a lot of people buy nice cameras and then put them in soft camera bags--it boggles the mind. If you take decent care of it, and don't let too many people who don't know what they're doing screw around with it, it should last for years even with heavy use. Just clean the heads every now and then, and make sure to watch out for the "conflicting lubricant" issue by either standardizing on one brand of tape or frequently switching brands (more info on that here). Also, get a decent tripod and some sandbags, especially if you're going to leave the camera unattended. It only takes one good fall to destroy your camera completely, and that probably won't be covered under warranty.
haha you're an idiot.
2GB is diddly squat for digital video. maybe with some grainly MPEG compression, you can get some decent running time out of it, but that is not going to cut it for anyone except the low-end consumer grade stuff.
6GB isn't much better. at least with microdrives - the moving parts are contained within the drive. if the drive wears out or breaks, you can chuck it and get another one for $100 or whatever they cost these days. however, that does bring up another issue - no one wants to carry around 10 microdrives to do recording. a microdrive is also probably rated for much more runtime and is sealed from dust and moisture than the parts of a camcorder.
digital tape works well becuase you get good running time, raw video, and the casettes are cheap.
my idea of a good DV cam - 2.5" laptop drives. the capacities are up to at least 100GB right now. that would be a lot more reasonable for doing digital video. selectable compression would also be reasonable in the situations where having a raw video is not needed. however, 2GB flash cards are silly for digital video.
i really do think betamax recorders are probably the best for rugged "in the field" work in terms of quality. its still analog but the quality is pretty damned good. you can convert it to digital at your a/v deck in the studio. do realize that much of our television feeds still go up via ANALOG sattelite.
Oh, and MPEG-1/2 also has some additional design constraints that were removed for MPEG-4, such as the requirement to be able to easily skip one frame backwards (MPEG-4 was designed for streaming, MPEG-1/2 were designed for local playback), so MPEG-4 doesn't encode reverse-interframe information. If you want to jump one frame backwards in MPEG-4, you jump back to the previous keyframe (often 100 or so frames back), and then calculate the deltas for every single intermediate frame. Try editing that...
As to the link you posted, I am very suspicious of a chart which groups Sorenson, MPEG-4 and Cinepak in the same column...
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