Forum

Quoted from Turbo

[…]

why would he want a stills camera ?

They are really expensive and have bad video quality. He wants to capture video with a external microphone to get good sound . I would go with the handycam.

Not true. But if you want video I would look into the 7D or 5DmkII.

In all fairness, there is a few DSLR’s that have image quality comparable to that of some of the better HD camcorders, but for practicality, HDV tape and recording times still make a camcorder the better option.

Turbomonkey, do you even read replies?

I have worked with video cameras ranging from 500 euros to 4000+ euros and out of all those, the best video quality I’ve seen came from a 7D dSLR (haven’t used the 5D myself, haven’t seen any raw footage of it. Light perception is supposed to be a little bit better but the jello effect is larger)

Also you don’t need a really expensive mic. Any decent condenser will do. Indeed, Rode, or Sennheiser.

But yeah if your budget isn’t high enough for a 7D, a “normal” camcorder/handycam thingie would be sufficient. HDV is an option but you have the trouble of having to capture the video in realtime instead of just clicking and dragging a video file from your camera to your pc. I don’t know any specific models, but surely compression technology must be sufficient these days? And “big” flash memory comes in large sizes nowadays (64 GB is pretty normal).

Quoted from Turbo

[…]

Holy shit …. and that comes from a dSLR ? damn ….

I suppose that technology has gotten much better since my nikon d40.

Yah I was pretty impressed too. In the market for a dSLR and gonna go with a D3100 and even that @ £400 inc a 18-55mm lens has 1080p HD recording just the autofocus takes a little time on fast moving objects. They have come on alot since the d40!

You could always hire a camera for a few days to begin with, and then when you find something you like, you could look into buying one.