Digital CamCorders

[GIT-R-DONE]

What are the best digital cam corders on the market now? Reasonably priced but yet have the quality that one looks for. I want one that you can take still photos from but yet can do the move thing as well. Am looking to buy soon so any ideas and things to look for/not buy or stay away from please do tell. Thanks Don

 

[Dkevdog]

I would reccommend looking at Canon, particularly the ZR70mc and up. We bought 15 of them for work (we are professional photographers) and have used them for schools for video yearbook stuff. The quality is very good, and the lenses and interchangeability offer good flexibility. The ZR70mc also has excellent low light capabilities. As far as using them for still photo... ... ... most (except for the really high end DV cams) are not going to give you great quality for stills. Adequate, but not great. If your hoping to get high quality, you're likely going tostill be lugging around a digicam.



Kev

 

[HoleshotHolset]

Unfortunately, It all boils down to how much you want to spend.



The ideal situation would be to find a camera with three CCD's (Charged Coupled Device)... . this will yield the best image possible.



A lot of cameras out there claim to have technology that increases the resolution. There are only two ways to increase resolution... . 1) Use CCD's with more REAL pixels 2) Use multiple CCD's.



3-chip cameras cost more, but the increase in resolution is phenomenal.



You will never be happy with 'still/static' frames that you shoot with a digital camcorder as opposed to a good megapixel+ digital camera. The difference is usually night and day with the digital camera almost always having better quality.



As for brands... you can't go wrong with Sony, Canon... . but Panasonic has some nice stuff out now too.....



All the cameras I would buy are $3,000 and up... . Needless to say... I won't be buying one for a while.



Matt

 

[Dkevdog]

Gees Matt, he said "reasonably priced"!! Man, you have good tast in cameras . I'm lucky, I get to play with all the new toys at my bosses expense. You are quite right, we have several sony 3ccd ship cameras, one of which is in a negative/scanning digital anaylizer. The Camera alone is $14K... .



Kev

 

[Duluth Diesel]

I concur with Dkevdog. I have one of those Canons, and have been VERY pleased with its performance. I did buy the biggest battery available though. The one it come with is pretty worthless.

 

[TheWolf]

the problem I am having also is that none of the digital cameras have a big enough zoom along with other features. Most have 10 x optical and I am used and sort of need about 25x optical zoom. To me digital zoom is pretty much worthless. I too, was looking for one with digital stills, but noticed that even the best usually had about 1 mp as the best quality for the stills(= not that good). a queston for dkevdog, how do still pictures turn out if you replay the video on computer and pause the picture and print it. you could get any still you wanted that way. Does it take a certain program to do that?





I have gone into about 4 different places and asked who has the best dig recorders out there and if they would buy one which brand would they buy and all have said sony.

 

[HoleshotHolset]

I have used/setup camera rigs that had fluid heads and lenses more expensive than most people's cars... I shudder to think what some of the camera bodies I have used go for.....



You could say that I'm spoiled by the really high-end broadcast TV equipment that I use/used to use.



Matt

 

[jtisdale]

Dont listen to these guys...

14k for a camera? You must be insane.

My recommendation is to look at the Sony line. I bought a

DCR-TRV 50 mini dv for about $1300. It works awesome. Awesome quality video and sound. It takes still pictures. You can also take still pictures from a video, after you have already taped it. It takes mpeg video so you can load it right on to your computer via a memory stick, but the quality is usually lower than regular video. It has all kinds of editing features too, but I dont really use them.

It has a super steady shot, total night vison and a whole bunch of other features.

See a video shot in MPEG form here...

http://www.enterpriseengine.com/miscfiles/MineralPoint.mpg



And a still taken from a video here...

#ad




And a still (not from a video)

#ad

 

[TheWolf]

so how much difference is there really between the real digital(mini dv) and the regular ones (i think it is HI 8 or digital 8)?



Can one actually see a difference? Is one just easier for editing or putting on the computer. The problem I see with digital( I have never used one yet so correct me if I am wrong!) is that when doing action things like racing, quick movement seems to blurr on the screen. Just like the focus can not keep up with the movement. example: watch some football (are they all using digital or just some) I think it is CBS( are they using digital) when you are watching a play( especially if they are zoomed in a little) the players seem to have an 'echo'/'blur' to their movement. And this is with probably the best equipment out there!

 

[HoleshotHolset]

What you are seeing could be a few things... . but I'll explore the most likely scenario in this post.



With any digital system, you have A/D (analog/digital) converters... . or codecs (Compression / Decompression). The codec's sole purpose in life is to reduce bandwidth so that the signal can be passed or stored as efficiently as possible. The codec (whether through software, hardware, or both... ) looks at the digitally sampled information and through a complex algorithm, it decides which information will be excluded from the final stored/transmitted signal. It will fill in the missing pieces that it deemed a redundancy and sometimes you see the end result in the form of 'motion blur'... or you'll end up with perfect little boxes all over the screen... . That's the codec being overwhelmed with too much bandwidth...



There are a lot of points along the video/audio stream where this compression/decompression is happening... so there are a lot of chances for this sort of dropout...



Completely analog systems are not prone to this as the signal is stored and transmitted as an electrical waveform. Since an analog signal is an electrical waveform... it is highly susceptible to interference... . this is part of the reason why digital signals appear so clean... they are not as prone to interference... . or what I should say is that they have error correction and an "all or nothing" signal transmission sceme. You either got it... or you don't... . there's nothing inbetween... . like static in an analog system.



Make sense?



The difference between digital and analog is pretty significant. This post is getting too long, so I'll explain it further if you'd like in another post... .



Matt - video geek

 

[TheWolf]

Keep on keeping on!



Do you have any ideas on what would be good for me, I know I can not have everything I want ,but I will try. So far I would like, around 20x-25x optical zoom( I do not care for digital zoom) , Image stabilization( is there an optical here too?) low light, digital stills would be nice also, as many ccd's or what every they are(doesn't sony have the best). Long battery life. somewhat small package , not big and heavy. It has been a while since I haave looked at any, but something like a sony (is it a trv 350?) but in digital form. I do mostly fast action sports /racing shots and need something with good zoom and be able to focus in low light in zoom mode( Half of recording is after dark under the lights of the race track) I cant afford the nice $1500-$2000 ones and they are big and usually have only 10x zoom anyhow. What would you reccomend in the $1000- and under mark? I know there is other things I was looking for in a recorder , but it has been a while and forgot some things. What else does anyone reccomed as far as features also?

 

[HoleshotHolset]

Spending less than $1000 and trying to get all the features you want will be pretty tough... .



I wouldn't worry about battery life... especially if you get a Sony. Pretty much all of their cameras take the same style battery and you get get like a 4 hour battery pack for 'em.



Optical image stabilization? Get a 'steadycam'... . Sorry... that's a film/video geek joke... .



You're right in not liking digital zoom... . it looks like garbage.



Maybe you could go to a NASCAR web forum... . sorta like the TDR for 'roundy-round' folks... . maybe they have a favorite handycam that isn't too much bread.....



I can't even really comment on the consumer grade stuff... . it has been so long since I've even looked at what's available. I do get a kick out of the burn-direct to DVD models, though... .



Matt