Video/DV camera - Use one?
 

When we go away, we ususally have taken our DV camera. Unfortunately, we left it on the plane coming back from Budapest in April. Luckily, we had trip insurance and our policy covered it.

Now, we need to buy another one. Any suggestions? Any we should stay away from? (We had a Panasonic which came with a built-in light, which was great.) We're not interested in the hard drive type. And price - $400 or under.

Hope this is an OK forum to ask this.

ttt

anyone?

I have been shooting video for 20 years and have travelled to Europe for the last 9 years with a variety of video cameras, starting with a Sony Digital 8 camera in 1998.

This summer I took a Sony DCR-SR300, which is a hard drive camera, and I would never want to shoot tape again.

I'm not sure why you don't want a hard drive camera but let me try to sway your thinking.

Reason #1: No little tapes to lose

Reason #2: Ten hours of high quality video before the hard drive is full.

Reason #3: Amazing indexing. All of your clips show up as thumbnails in the order they were shot on the touch screen. Touch the clip thumbnail and it plays. All of the clips are also indexed by the day they were shot. So if I want to see what you shot on the 3rd day of your trip, just find that date in the index.

Reason #4: I import all of my video into a video editing program. With tapes, I had to log and capture. Now, my camera mounts as an external hard drive on my computer and I just drag clips into the editing program.

Reason #5: In-camera editing. You can look at your video and delete bad footage.

Reason #5: The camera I have has a 6.1 megapixel digital camera (with flash) built in. Because I am a photographer who also travels with a Canon 5D dslr and because I occasionally get tired of hauling a fairly large camera around, it is nice to have a palm sized camera that serves two purposes. The photo quality isn't great but its pretty good. It makes great 4x6 prints. You can record the photos to the hard drive or to a SD card

Sorry to give you advice you didn't ask for but I didn't think I'd want a hard drive camera, either.

Of course, if you shoot hour after hour of video on your trips, you would probably worry about running out of drive space. I spent a month in Europe this summer and shot 5 hours (which is more than I would subject even my best friends to!). I still have a little under 5 hours of blank hard drive space.

If you'd like to look at a short clip recorded with the camera, go to

http://tinyurl.com/2qnpz8

The video is shot in wide screen and is highly compressed for my web page and therefore doesn't give you a true sense of the quality of video. Incidentally, you can also shoot in the more traditional non-wide format, too.

HI sshepherd -

I looked up the camera you recommended and the prices I got were between $770-$1000 - way more than I want to spend. Also it has no view finder - which I find much easier to use than looking at that tiny screen.

Viewed your lovely footage of Corfu(?).

Sorry, I intended to mention in my original posts that this particular camera would likely be outside of your budget.

There are cheaper models, of course. As for the viewfinder, I wonder if it's more a matter of what you are used to. Frankly, the screen on my camera is about 2.5 inches wide, which is substantially bigger than the little viewfinder on most video cameras I have used.

But I, too, wondered about a camera that only had a screen and no viewfinder since I had always used the viewfinder for shooting before. However, the reason I did this is that I found that the screen consumed battery power way too fast. With this Sony, I never did use the second battery that I bought for it.

I used a small Canon MiniDV for two years and was very satisfied with that. I just checked B&H Photo for the model I had but it has been discontinued.

Generally, when I look for a video camera, I look for something that has steady-shot, a reasonable zoom (but don't be fooled by a camera that has a high digital zoom number), a good lens otherwise and something that is small, since as I've said, I carry both a video and a dslr camera.

Good luck in your search. And yes, it was Corfu, a place my wife and I have fallen in love with.

I teach videography and video editing at a high school and for my program there we have used Sony Digital 8 cameras for years. They use 8mm tape instead of MiniDV tape but are an outstanding value.

The only thing is that they aren't quite as compact. Try looking at the TRV280. $235USD at B&H.