[TomWilko]

Hello,

Need some advice regards a video camera purchase. Now, before we go any further I need to profess I know very little about this market, coming from a large knowledge of DSLR's I presume Canon, Sony etc are pretty big players?

Target is: the best camera under £500

What do you advise we look at? It is for mainly indoor filming of Swimmers (being used by professional Swimming coaches) where light is not fantastic. Do we go for a 'HD' camera which I so frequently see advertised.

Purposes of the output will be to create DVD's and also video we can stream via the Internet.

Any advice would be great,

Tom

[avlava]

Normal SD DVDs and lower bitrate Web broadcasts will be trickier to do if you get a HD camcorder.

Also low light tends to be an issue (or not as good) from what i've read with some of the HD AVCHD camcorders.

If you are not going to have the requirement for HD and need simple editing without a high spec PC i'd probably suggest sticking to an SD camera which you should be able to get a fairly good quality one for that budget.

Having said that it depends how long you want to keep the camera for and if in the future you have ability to do blueray, AVCHD formatted disks the HD picture will be far better.

I'm afraid i've only just started looking in this market too so cant recommend any SD cams.

[TomWilko]

Hi,

Thanks for the information. So your suggestion would be a good quality SD camera? As for future use, I foresee the majority of production being passed through downloadable content (in our business), and as such we won't be needing to keep up to date with Blue-ray etc.

Any particular models to consider?

Thanks,

Tom

[senu]

Avlavas comments were mainly to do with HDDs based camcorders recording Hi def

Actually, if you dont mind tape. You can buy a very good HDV ( hi def) camcorder which will allow you download to PC as SD but record as hi def. Whichever way you chose to market your content, there is no harm in having Hi def "masters" : you never know , when they will be handy as such,
The output on PC should be easy to convert for web and SD DVDs with minimum quality drop given that the starting quality was very good to start with
Also at your given price point, low light proficiency is likelier to be better with a tape solution. It is however my experience that lighting levels in swimming pools actually tend to be quite good

It is certainly true that SD HDD camcorders ( Sony SR 190 SR 75 ect) If you can find them are good

So,Whilst it is true that AVCHD camcorders ( as Hi def recorded on HDD) have evolved to a high standard
1) the camcorders may still be somewhat above your budget
2) Unlike tape your conversion to SD for DVD and web use will have to be done on the PC by software and may
Need fairly beefy hardware for playback and editing
and
result in quality loss
and
Be quite time consuming for conversion to SD DVD and web formats

For tape if you can get an "older" Sony HC5 , or HC7 or Canon HV20 ( or older "HV 10") within budget I wouldnt dismiss them in a hurry