What HD camera should i get for making movies?

Question by Marshall: What HD camera should i get for making movies?
i want to buy a good camera and my primary use is for recording HD videos and i’m not planning to take pictures with it at all, considering that, should i get a digital camcorder or a digital camera?
I want it to be good quality with decent FPS for slow-mo shots and other visual effects and i also want the video format to be something that i can render well and the quality comes out good (i don’t want the videos to be too big though). my budget is around $ 100-$ 150, what brand and model would you recommend?
Thanks

Best answer:

Answer by Scott
You have conflicting specs, especially in the price.

First thing, your really need to do some research on HD, essentially it isn’t! This is a highly compressed format which makes it a poor choice for slow-mo and other effects.

Take a look at good old miniDv tape based standard def. That little 720 X480 frame had 13 gigs/hour of data and very low 6:1 compression with ZERO compression in brightness (the most important channel for a quality picture).

Your HD cameras have a frame that is 6 times bigger (Sounds good), yet on the best resolution they get 11 Gigs/hour. 15% less data for 600% the frame size.

MiniDv can be up converted, and still have less effective compression than HD!

The only entry level MiniDv camera I know of from a major brand is the Canon ZR960 at around $ 300.

The good news, a lot of people did not want to bother with tape based cameras and have a hard time understanding the concept of digital tape, compression, and other image quality issues…there are a lot of barely used MiniDv camcorders available second hand. Look around and be cautious, but you should be able to find an older MiniDv camcorder in your price.

Allow a budget for a new battery, a head cleaning tape, and make sure your computer can deal with the video, including the required firewire port.

What do you think? Answer below!