I need a video camera. HALP!!

[angrydrone]

I would like to buy a video camera very soon. Problem is though, I have no idea what to look for or where to start.

I want to be able to record all kinds of car things among other random stuff. I want something that can record late night races with little light, races at drag strip during night and day, record at the road course.

If anyone can give me their insight on what they use, why they use it, if they like it or not that would be great. Also if someone could point me to some kind of reading I should do to decide that would be great.

Chris

btw Where does everyone buy their cameras? Ebay seems like a good choice to me.

 

[PROJECT N00b]

sony mini dvd cam corder.

 

[angrydrone]

Do you do a lot of videoing?

 

[theKnifeArtist]

sony mini dvd cam corder.

hah yeah my friend has that, he took it along when we went to the street races at night and man did it come out clear. plays on the computer but it plays real nice on the tv, and you can like record over stuff and a whole bunch of shit.

 

[GotTurbos?]

I hated my dvd camcorder for the short time I had it.

It kept getting errors in the disks, and that is a common problem with all dvd camcorders

I like the new jvc ones with the internal harddrives, like 20gigs of onboard capacity

 

[angrydrone]

I would be way too scared that I would get an error on the disc.

 

[artmo]

stay with mini dv!

 

[PROJECT N00b]

we had a DV one from JVC, went FUBAR recorded only sound and nothing else. our sony is doing well and there are alot of peripherals for them.

 

[Kyle87T]

I am also looking for a new camcorder. How does the quality compare on a HDD to a DVD camcorder? Is mini DV old technology with less than standard quality?

 

[steven89]

I have a JVC 20gb cam corder..works pretty good... was expensive. Dont know how it would do at low lighted street races or similar.

 

[bigunitpitcher22]

I have a JVC 20gb cam corder..works pretty good... was expensive. Dont know how it would do at low lighted street races or similar.

20 gigs isn't much for recording video, how long can it store? I can only get just over an hour at full DV quality with my capture card in my computer with 15 gigs

 

[suprarx7nut]

Alright guys, here ya go...

Mini-DVD is on its way out. It can yield better quality than DV but its prone to problems. Its great when it works, but it breaks often, and you get an error very easily(i.e. a skip). Not to mention these are much more than DV's.

DV's are good and reliable in general. You wont get HD quality, but you'll get a reliable companion for the most part. (Sony tends to be the best) These are the cheapest and you can easily bring along 3 cassetes to get 3 hours of high qaulity recording. The main problem here is transferring it to your computer. You'll need a firewire which isnt a big deal, but its a time-consuming process and it requires some setting changing to vary your qualities and shit. Its not hard, but you have to "play" the video onto your hard drive. 3 hours video takes 3 hours + set-up to put on your computer.

Now I would strongly recommend going HDD. This is on the rise and can hold 60 gigs on some units. The quality is great (limited by the lens and CCD, not the media as with DVD and DV) and you can store a ton. They're generally reliable and rarely skip or run into errors from what I've seen. If you can afford to wait 6 months then wait. The prices on these are falling very fast. And they should work out most the new-product bugs these have now. Its relatively new to anyone but JVC so if you want one now get a JVC or get some sort of extended service or warranty on another brand.

I used to work at Best Buy selling camcorders, so I used these and talked to many, many people that had them. I havent sold these for around 6-months, but I still work at Best Buy and work next to the camcorders so I talk with the other guys and nothing major seems to have changed.

Buying off E-bay is great and can save you some serious money, but its also somewhat risky especially with this sort of device. If you can find a factory sealed one, you're probably fine, but many people sell it as new when it really has been opened, it just doesnt show any wear. Go to Shutterbug.com and do some reading, i think they have some good info.

Hope that helps some of you guys!!

 

[Wills7MGTE]

I used to do video, had some schooling in it, quality wise I'd stick to sony, fuji, and a few others. If you want good quality video don't go with the dvd, the hard drives are ok but they still compress the video. Also consider whether the camera has one or three ccd's, ccd's collect light and filter it into the image, if theres three the video is much better quality than if there is only one CCD.

 

[angrydrone]

You guys are awesome! I will definitely check out shutterbug and do some reading but that will have to wait until tomorrow as I have finals tomorrow.

Thanks,
Chris