Now I hear that Hong Kong is the place for all things electrical, so I am am hoping to use the excuse of Christmas to pick me up a new little gadget.
Top of my wish list is a camcorder, so that I can play around with making my own videos. The problem is I haven’t got a huge budget (£200 max.).
Is there anything small and whizzy that I could get for that price? It doesn’t have to produce the best quality video, just something that wouldn’t be horrible to view on this blog.
Ideas?
Sanyo Xacti HD2 or Aiptek Z300HD
Look for the position of the microphone. If it’s near the lens then it’ll pick up all the clicks and wirrs of the auto-focus. Similarly if you’re recording to tape be aware of how much machine noise is picked up there.
End of the day look for an external mic port so you can plug one in.
Or if you want something small that can fit in a pocket go for a stills camera that does video? I bought a little Leica but you can get a Panasonic DMC-LX2 for probably that much in HK and it does web-quality video if that’s all you want it for. And then it’s just a file, so no downloading from tape and editing etc.
http://www.digitalrev.com/en/product_details.php?item_id=1217
Ooh, Stef. Is that the camera the Stereographic boys had on their Plus stall? It was set to take a photo every five minutes or so if I remember rightly. Lumix rings a bell and that’s not too expensive all told…
I may pick one up in duty free myself…
Your main choice is between something that has internal flash memory or something with removable media.
A DV based cam is probably the most pro way to go and will have longer record times, but make sure that it has a means to do a file based transfer to your PC or you will need to get a vid cap card and do a linear dub which is going to be no fun at all.
If it is solid state check what the record times are and make sure it records a sensible format (mpeg, dv, etc).
I would agree with Pete that a mic in is essential. People will put up with crap video but bad audio drives people nuts.