What is a good camera for filming purposes?

[Destroyer2000]

One that is relatively high quality, yet somewhat cheap? I need to get a camcorder, and I will be splitting the cost amongst my friends and I, so yeah.

[rocklobster]

[Warrior4Christ]

What media are you intending to film onto? That's a major factor in narrowing down which type of camera to buy.

[Destroyer2000]

Media? What do you mean? This is something a few friends and I are doing - creating a movie. We want to try to make it to Sundance, haha.

[Saj]

The media would be something like mini dv(digital videotape), dvd.

Cameras that use mini dv are older, and consequently cheaper. the tapes are cheaper then dvds.

dvd are newer, and some times expesive. Prices range from ~300 to 1200


If i were you, id get a mini dv cam. They are cheaper then most of the modern, and still give you decent video quality.

http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-PV-GS29-MiniDV-Camcorder-Optical/dp/B000DZDQ26/ref=sr_1_19/104-6854514-8731901?ie=UTF8&s=photo&qid=1173197286&sr=1-19

^^ Thats probably the best bang for your buck

[Swordguy]

plus mini dv have most of the bugs worked out on them as well, and they are nice i have one, i have one it is great but i forgot how to get it to work with firewire...

[Warrior4Christ]

If i were you, id get a mini dv cam. They are cheaper then most of the modern, and still give you decent video quality.

Mini-DV actually gives you the *best* video quality. Those DVD/hard disk recorders use MPEG 2 (most of them anyway), whereas Mini-DV is in lesser-compressed DV form (usually put into a DV-AVI file..).

[Dunedan]

Yeah... mini-DV is by no means "old". You may be referring to 8-millimeter, which is lower quality. I don't believe anymore 8-millimeter cameras are being made, but they still sell the tapes and such a camera would be pretty darn cheap.

Beyond that, you have three levels of camera to look at, consumer, professional, and pro-sumer, a mix of the two. If you're wanting to take a film to ANY festival, Sundance aside, you probably want at least a prosumer level camera, such as an Canon XL-2 or Panasonic AG.

Prosumer cameras usually come with three color cards (CCD's), which gives better image quality and color accuracy. They often also come with progressive scan which makes the video more closely resemble film to put it simply. Prosumer cameras also usually come with at least two microphone plugins installed. This is another huge must for amateur and hopeful professional filmmakers as in-camera mikes generally suck beyond all belief. You'll also probably want to purchase a shotgun mike, which costs around $300 for a cheaper one. Any of the above mentioned cameras will cost you between $2,000 and $8,000.

You could also get an HD camcorder, which usually records to an HD-DVD or a hard-drive in the camera. I'm less informed as to these. But mini-DV cameras are definitely not inferior in quality, though consumer level (price-range $120-$500) ones are inferior due to the image capturing mechanisms in the camera itself.

I'm personally saving up for one of the prosumer cameras, as I'm a VCT major (well, soon-to-be) focusing on video.