Jamie_B

Just started looking at purchasing a mini digital camcorder, I've looked on a few sites like firebox ect. But I'm still not sure what to go for, any suggestions/reviews welcomed.

My budget is £100 to £150.

Jamie_B

Anyone??

gsm1

You'll be lucky to get a digital camcorder for that kind of budget. You might find a discounted Samsung somewhere but that would be about it.

imlach

Whatever you do, don't be duped into buying these "digital camcorders" for around £100, which are really just 640x480 webcam type things.....

You want a camcorder which adheres to the MiniDV standard....and you'll prob have to spend £250+ new.

davyboy

I just bought one of these. Has an AV in, comes with Pinnacle editing Software. Battery life is short though.

http://www.digital-cameras.com/Digit...mera-2199.html

djuk

I would second that, wouldnt fancy your chances of picking up anything half decent for that sort of budget I'm afraid. Ebay may be an option but need to be careful regarding the warranty if buying non-uk

David

imlach

I've yet to see a bad MiniDV camcorder, and I'm sure Sony don't make a bad one. You'll find the MiniDV pictures in good daylight are great. Lowlight always presents more of an issue for most camcorders.

davyboy

I looked at those, but I wanted one that I could plug an external camera in to, so I needed an AV in.

Digital 8 as well which I have no experience of.

Jamie_B

Thanks for all the replys, I think I'll wait a while and up my budget. I was looking at one of these but as Imlach says they are only just 640x480 webcam type things....


Thanks,

imlach

You NEED firewire for doing DV editing - anyway, you can pick up firewire cards for under £10 these days....

imlach

I really hate these Mustek things - people are duped into thinking it is a MiniDV camera due the fact it looks like one. In reality, it is NAFFtastic - not even as good video quality as a VHS-C or Video8 analogue camcorder!

imlach

Out of the Sony & the Canon, I'd go for the Canon.
It is MiniDV, and not Digital8 like the Sony......

imlach

Also, see here

http://www.simplydv.co.uk/Formats/DVandD8.html

davyboy

Quality is great, certainly up to the job of recording track days etc.

I bought a firewire cable, but the camera came with a USB cable.

imlach

The USB connection won't give you full quality video out of it though - only the firewire connection will.

djuk

Most cameras will come with a USB cable, im guessing because its cheaper to include by a small margin than a firewire cable. The quality will be awful via usb though.

davyboy

Then you will need some tapes.....oh and a bigger capacity battery too!

djuk

Then bigger hard drive for storing all the footage, maybe a couple of different sized tripods, nice carry case, spotlight

imlach

Yes, do remember full MiniDV output over firewire eats into the hard-drive at the rate of 3Mbytes/s. So, that's 1 Gigabyte of drive for every 5 minutes of video.

The advantage of buying in the high st is that while the price is higher, you may also persuade them into giving you 5 DV tapes for free....so do take that into account when comparing. Same rule applies for most purchases - if the different is only £10, ease of purchase is sometimes worth it.

imlach

Yeah, so with a DVD burner, you can easily edit your footage, and then convert it into MPEG2 which will allow about 2 hours of footage on a single layer DVD.

You do need a fast-ish PC for all this - faster the better helps the MPEG2 to compress quicker - you'd prob have to leave it processing overnight for a long video anyway....

imlach

Your PC will be fine for the job.

Yes, DV output in raw form is huge, but then there's no need to store it in raw form aside from on tape. A magnetic tape probably has a lifetime of around 15 years, but long before then, you'll be able to shove hundreds of Gb on something pretty small (ie, next gen format for data storage). ie, in 5-10 years, all your footage from this year will probably fit on 1 cd-sized media....

I have stored some raw (and edited) DV video on DVD, but most are 20 minute films, so can fit on 1 DVD.

If you're happy enough to store it as MPEG2 (ie, DVD) as a permanent record, then you have no probs.

Suffice to say, the disk space required on your hard drive will only be transitory. It does sometimes help if the free space on the hard drive is contiguous though....you might get glitches if the hard drive head is bouncing all over the place trying to find the next free sectors.....so defrag if you are tight on space.

imlach

PS Once you've started editing video footage on a PC, and tried to make it into short films, you'll understand how time consuming film editing as a job must be - especially co-ordinating overdubbed sounds/music etc to film.

imlach

Oh, and I know the data size of DV sounds staggering, but think of it like this....

An image from a 3MP digital camera is 1Mb if compressed as a JPEG.
There are 25 frames per second in video.

So, if you were taking 25 digital still photos per second, it'd be 25Mb/second.

Obviously DV is nowhere near the quality of a 3MP still image, hence the 3Mb/second.

It seems fair enough when you think of it like that......

imlach

Premium models may have DV-IN, better lens, 0 lux night vision, larger optical zoom, and prescious little else. The picture quality won't be THAT better, if at all. The 0 lux night vision is pretty much something you won't use unless you are a stalker or like videoing foxes at night etc

Above £1k, you're starting to look at 3CCD models (1 CCD for each primary colour, red, green, blue). I have one of these, and the picture quality is one step up towards broadcast quality. Colour reproduction is improved with less wishy-washy colours than on a 1CCD model. That sometimes comes at the expense of low-light performance. You'll find that ALL video requires strong lighting to be at it's best - just like professional tv cameras really - the tv cameras need extra light even if during the day!

You'll find a lot of tv channels now have these prosumer 3CCD models used by people recording video-diaries etc. The quality really is quite acceptable for even broadcast use.

Nevetas

As of my info last month the Sony PDX10 DVCAM is what the BBC uses for video-diaries. Supurb camera, I've had mine for about 5 weeks now.

DVCAM is pro, mini dv is consumer. But once you make the leap it starts to get all abit pricey!