I've been shooting with the Canon XL1 for years and have been happy with it for the most part. Now I'm ready to upgrade, but am unsure which direction to go. I know Canon's XL2 is popular and Panasonic has some lighter weight cameras on the market that I hear produce fabulous images. I wouldn't mind spending the money if I knew I was getting superior picture quality to the XL1. My price range is $5000
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Looking for digivid camera advice
- Thread starter homer20001
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homer20001 said:
I can't say I've used any of those cameras but one that I was looking at in that price range was a Sony HDR-FX1 HDV Handycam® Camcorder.
( http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INT...goryName=dcc_DICamcorders_HighDefinitionVideo )
It seemed to have everything I was looking for and actually went down in price 1300 bucks from when I first looked at it.
Just my $0.02
Sony all the way!
Get a Sony HDR-HC1 or HVR-A1. I have the HDR-HC1 and it's awesome! Also there discontinuing it to replace it with the HDR-HC3. But the HC1 is still better and has more options. You can find a good price online somewhere. Also the larger HD such as leftbanke7 said is a great camcorder to. It just depends how big you want the camera to be... Best of luck deciding.
Nuc
edit: check out http://www.sonyhdvinfo.com
Get a Sony HDR-HC1 or HVR-A1. I have the HDR-HC1 and it's awesome! Also there discontinuing it to replace it with the HDR-HC3. But the HC1 is still better and has more options. You can find a good price online somewhere. Also the larger HD such as leftbanke7 said is a great camcorder to. It just depends how big you want the camera to be... Best of luck deciding.
Nuc
edit: check out http://www.sonyhdvinfo.com
I've operated a Panasonic DVX100a for the past year, and absolutely love it. Sure those Sony cams will do HD (not true HD, mind you), but it still looks like video! No matter what the resolution of the camera is, you cannot escape this fact.
However, the DVX100a is beautiful. With it you can produce true 24p images, with very a very film-like gamma. The fully manual zoom and focus are incredibly useful as well- snap zooms and perfect focus can both be accomplished easily. In addition, the two built in XLR ports provide you with the option to expand your audio solutions without limiting you to consumer mics. It's a really sturdy and well built camera, and if I were cameraless with $5000, I'd buy it again.
With that said, there's a new DVX100b, which i assume has a few new features. My guess is it's basically the same camera with an additional "ooh" or "ahh", but i've never tried it and can't be sure.
However, the DVX100a is beautiful. With it you can produce true 24p images, with very a very film-like gamma. The fully manual zoom and focus are incredibly useful as well- snap zooms and perfect focus can both be accomplished easily. In addition, the two built in XLR ports provide you with the option to expand your audio solutions without limiting you to consumer mics. It's a really sturdy and well built camera, and if I were cameraless with $5000, I'd buy it again.
With that said, there's a new DVX100b, which i assume has a few new features. My guess is it's basically the same camera with an additional "ooh" or "ahh", but i've never tried it and can't be sure.
pdpfilms said:
IIRC, the "b" is exactly the same as the "a" it's just manufactured w/less lead content (and some other things) to meet some new environmental standards.
Is the $5k budget for a camera alone or for a "camera package" (batteries, case, tripod, etc.,.)? Are you looking for an SD or HD camera? Is this primarily for personal use or is it going to be a money maker?
Lethal
HDV is a compressed codec, meant to bring an affordable solution to non-pros. True high defintion footage (i.e. Discovery Channel, ESPN, etc.) is shot in uncompressed HD.3dit3r said:
It's probably splitting hairs but, IMO, HDV (like DV before it) is a consumer format that's good enough for various prosumer and pro applications.3dit3r said:
HDCAM and DVCPro HD are both compressed formats (DVCPro HD more so than HDCAM) although neither one is nearly as compressed as the current generation of HDV cameras. Things like the Genesis or the Viper Filmstream I think could be called uncompressed, but the use to date of that caliber of camera, AFAIK, has been limited to the occasional big budget feature film.pdpfilms said:
The difference in quality can be mild to extreme depending on what's being shot. The compression method used w/HDV is the formats best friend and worst enemy. HDV's heavy compression allows it fit an HD image into a very small data stream (good) but it also means the image is more likely to break up than other types of HD when there is a lot of movement in the image (bad) and HDV can be a bit of a PITA to work with in post (also bad). A number of people using HDV to pay the rent shoot HDV but transcode it to another codec to edit with.Nuc said:
There are a number of other factors that determine how well various formats and cameras perform head-to-head but that would certainly take the thread excessively off topic.
As a final word though, there is a big enough difference in quality that pro's (if they can afford it) will choose a $100,000 HDCAM camera over a $4000 HDV camera, but the difference is also small enough that once the final product gets super compressed for distribution and a typical consumer watching it on their typical consumer TV probably won't notice a lick of difference.Lethal
I've used that one in the apple store and all I can say is MMMMM. All I got to spend was 500 bucks on my Panasonic 150 3CCD. Which is pretty nice too. You might should look at the upper end Panasonic cameras.leftbanke7 said: