[Parris]

My brother is an historian & horror tour guide in Scotland. He is becoming fairly well known for his talks, publications on Jacobite history, Scottish history and also his sideline, which is ghost tours in and around Edinburgh, Stirling & Perthshire.

For the last couple of years we have discussed the possibility of filming / recording his talk A) to be used online to drum up further business, such as hotel work (he gets a lot of interest from American / Canadian tourists) and B) possible DVD sales.

I have a pretty good audio engineering background having worked in radio production a few years ago, therefore feel confident I can handle the audio aspect, editing of audio and sound effects etc.

However, filming is something totally new to both of us.

I have purchased a good, reliable and pretty cheap HHB MDP 500 minidisk recorder as a back-up audio recorder. Attached to this I have a Rode M3 condenser microphone with phantom power. We also have an AKG wireless microphone system for in-door and live (conference) recording) and we are pleased with the results from both this kit.

To keep things simple I am using the free audio editing program 'Audacity' which can be used to obtain the recordings from the HHB via USB. I can then convert the audio to a number of formats ready to be used in the video editing process.

I bought a really cheap & cheerful Panasonic SDR-H40 40Gb video camera. It is rather lacking in quality, but has provide useful as a means of getting to the stage my brother is now at. He's more comfortable in front of the camera and even after a couple of test runs his style has improved. Given a larger camera, I think he'd have frozen up! It should also provide sufficient quality for basic online material, however we both agree that when it comes to producing a DVD the quality is far too low.

We have a very tight budget and are looking at the second hand market. I am looking at £800-1000 being the absolute maximum.

The camera must be able to deal with low light effectively as a lot of the places my brother wants to film are darkened castle lobbies, crypts and the like. A camera with a hot-plate that can accept a lighting mount would be good. I'd like a removable microphone (to allow replacements and or none at all).

At the moment I am looking at Canon XL1s, Canon XM1 or Sony VX2000 type camera.

I really would like to get comments from anyone actually using this equipment or have direct experience rather than forwarding me to reviews, second-hand opinions etc.

I shall be using this with a firewire equipped iMac and Final Cut Express.

Thanks in advance.

[Parris]

No replies? Shame....

After hunting around for advice online and speaking to a few other people I finally went for a Canon XL1s.

[senu]

Originally Posted by Parris

No replies? Shame....

After hunting around for advice online and speaking to a few other people I finally went for a Canon XL1s.

Sorry about that
You did go for the right camera though
I have the VX2100 and love it
I have used the XL1s and it is better than the XM1
For your budget you really did shortlist the best for the money and have chosen the best of the bunch

[44deluxe]

Originally Posted by senu

Sorry about that
You did go for the right camera though
I have the VX2100 and love it
I have used the XL1s and it is better than the XM1
For your budget you really did shortlist the best for the money and have chosen the best of the bunch

I was put off the XL1s because somebody told me it doesn't do widescreen. Is that true?

[senu]

Originally Posted by 44deluxe

I was put off the XL1s because somebody told me it doesn't do widescreen. Is that true?

Yep , unfortunately it does "pseudo-widescreeen"
Not true wide screen . That belongs to the XL1s