Digital video cam, need advice.

[lendaddy]

I want to get the fam a video recorder before Christmas and I know next to nothing.

What is the most cost effective approach to take? I am thinking those mini tape ones will be just fine and they are fairly inexpensive.

What will I be missing out on if I go the mini tape sub $300 (as seen in the holiday sales lit.) route?

Edit: The use will just be for family stuff, no car mounts or weirdness. I would like the ability to download to a computer easily.

[stomachmonkey]

Len,

I love Sony products except for the stupid Memory Stick thing.

Sony have great color saturation and clarity. Build quality was an issue on my last one which I attribute to it being a lemon.

Look for one that uses SD cards.

Firewire is a must, most come that way anyway.

The biggest piece of advice I can offer is do some research online, check reviews and narrow down your choices.

Then go to retail and try them on. It's almost like buying shoes, it has to fit.

You may find your front runner is ergonomically unfriendly. Odd stuff like battery placement, accesability of menus, not well suited for your hand size in terms of button placement etc.

If it ain't comfortable then you won't use it.

Generally the smaller the better, you tend to not carry a bigger camera which just makes the whole thing a waste.

Also look for good low light (lux) capability. Look for high optical zoom, what can the lens do by itself. My daily carry is a Panasonic with 12x optical zoom. Nice little camera for the money. Not a lot of bells n whistles but it gets the job done.

One of the things generally missing on the sub $300's is the ability to use it as a pass through from your VCR to computer but that is, at least for me, a very minor thing.

[lendaddy]

Originally posted by stomachmonkey
Len,

I love Sony products except for the stupid Memory Stick thing.

Sony have great color saturation and clarity. Build quality was an issue on my last one which I attribute to it being a lemon.

Look for one that uses SD cards.

Firewire is a must, most come that way anyway.

The biggest piece of advice I can offer is do some research online, check reviews and narrow down your choices.

Then go to retail and try them on. It's almost like buying shoes, it has to fit.

You may find your front runner is ergonomically unfriendly. Odd stuff like battery placement, accesability of menus, not well suited for your hand size in terms of button placement etc.

If it ain't comfortable then you won't use it.

Generally the smaller the better, you tend to not carry a bigger camera which just makes the whole thing a waste.

Also look for good low light (lux) capability. Look for high optical zoom, what can the lens do by itself. My daily carry is a Panasonic with 12x optical zoom. Nice little camera for the money. Not a lot of bells n whistles but it gets the job done.

One of the things generally missing on the sub $300's is the ability to use it as a pass through from your VCR to computer but that is, at least for me, a very minor thing.

Wow, lots of info. I'll hit the review sites, thanks. Regarding the SD memory rigs, those are pretty expensive I thought?

[stomachmonkey]

Nah, SD card for still pictures. Most vid cams let you take a snapshot and save to a card.

I think you are thinking the Hard Drive camers, no tape. I like that option but am waiting for the prices to come down, they are up there.

SD is more common than Memory Sticks, you can use them in a lot more devices is all.

[motion]

MiniDVs are the most affordable, but ff/rewinding the tape is a pain in the butt. The new hard drive cameras are far more user-friendly, but they do use compression to record to the disk, so image quality does suffer, although 99% of the peeps out there probably wouldn't notice the difference. I'd suggest buying one at Costco. They have a good selection of MiniDV and HD based cameras, and an excellent return policy.

[stomachmonkey]

My only issue with the HD cameras, besides the current pricing, is preserving the footage. I have a terabyte of storage at home and carry 300 GB's with me and it never seems to be enough.

You can always dump straight to DVD but you need to make sure you buy quality media. The cheap stuff has a short shelf life.

I agree the tapes are a PIA but I like having them as another form of saving my stuff.

I figure between the tapes, HD's and DVD's i stand less of a chance of loosing my precious memories.

Scott

[lendaddy]

OK, I went at lunch and looked at two Sony products (I like Sony).

One was a miniDV with an card slot for stills (I already have several Sony cards) 20X optical zoom, etc. It's a nice small unit and I like it in general. Cost $350

The other was a 30gig Sony hard drive unit with the same basic setup for $550. It is a bit larger than the other, but still feels good.

I am leaning toward the MiniDV unit, for some reason I like the idea of seperate tapes for seperate things rather than everything on the HD. Not to mention the $200.

Thoughts?

Correction, 30gig not 300

[lendaddy]

After some thought I am now leaning to the HD unit. The ease of transfer to PC is the key. Hmmmm, I drop $200 on dumber things all the time

[Super_Dave_D]

Just consider one more thing. that 30 gig sony HD comes with a docking station that will allow you to easily transfer to your PC HD in MPEG2 so you can burn straight to DVD. Using the tape, you have to convert the tape to AVI and then to MPEG2 then you can burn to DVD. I have the new Sony DVD burner and can firewire straight from the camera to the burner (stand alone). I would reccomend this unit for anyone who doesnt want to do any editing. Not to mention you can get 7 hours of video on the 30 gig unit so you dont have to worry about tapes. Sony also makes a High Def HD cam that is pretty nice - for $1500

[stomachmonkey]

I hate bring this up cause I know Len has an opinion about it and I honestly believe we are all entitled to our own opinions.

I say that with 100% sincerity and absolutely no sarcasm is intended.

So I'll just say that there is a product that comes bundled on a particular computer that has a preset where you plug in your camera, enter a title for the project and hit go. It rewinds, (if needed) the camera, records and encodes the footage on the fly and burns to a DVD all while you are off doing something else.

If you wanted to do some editing that same piece of software imports as MPEG2 , no need to muck about with AVI's.

I do think the Sony stand alone burner happens to be a very nice piece of hardware.

For serious stuff I have one of these. Sweet friggin camera. Weighs almost nothing.



And Len,

If the extra $'s is not a deal breaker for you get the Hard Drive Camera. It will be easier to deal with.

Let us know what you got and give us a review.

Scott

[lendaddy]

Scott, I might shock you by admitting we have two MACs at home, oh and an iPod

I am really on the fence, the reviews say that everything shy of a grand sucks (image quality) but I'm simply not going to spend a grand...I'm not.

So, do I go the ultra cheap route or the middle route knowing that the image quality is bad either way? Or is the image quality not actually bad, but bad by professional standards?

I'm starting to think tape again as they are pretty much bullet proof too and it would suck to have to send my HD away for repair. For $300 I'd just throw the MiniDV unit away and get another.

[Super_Dave_D]

Yours is awesome BUT that unit you have is $3700 bucks right? That kind of removes 90% of the normal video cam people out there that just want to shoot vids of the family and what not. My 911 would be jelous if I spent that much on a cam.

[lendaddy]

You know, the main reason for the cam is to chronicle the kids lives (they're 1 and 2). I'm not going to be doing editing and/or immediate viewing. It will be a keepsake type setup.

I don't think I need the HD unit after all. Heck, in 3-4 years my kids will be getting into sports and maybe then I'll upgrade to whatever is vastly superior by then.

Another thought is damage. If I drop the HD unit and it won't work I have to send it off for repair AND to retrieve my video. The tapes are done when they're done and that's it......

Yea, unless you guys can convince me I'm gonna pick up the MiniDV unit after work.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally posted by lendaddy
Scott, I might shock you by admitting we have two MACs at home, oh and an iPod

I am really on the fence, the reviews say that everything shy of a grand sucks (image quality) but I'm simply not going to spend a grand...I'm not.

So, do I go the ultra cheap route or the middle route knowing that the image quality is bad either way? Or is the image quality not actually bad, but bad by professional standards?

I'm starting to think tape again as they are pretty much bullet proof too and it would suck to have to send my HD away for repair. For $300 I'd just throw the MiniDV unit away and get another.

That's exactly why I have the sub $300 Panasonic. The image quality is not that bad, the color and saturation are not as good as the $1200 Sony lemon that it replaced but I deal with that in the editing software plus if it breaks like the Sony did who cares, it was cheap.

The big mother Sony camera that I have is purely for work. The wife and kids are not allowed ANYWHERE near it.

Actually right now it's hooked up to an xbox 360 dev kit so I can grab Hi Def footage for some b-roll.

Please don't tell Sony or Microsoft.

Scott

[stomachmonkey]

Originally posted by lendaddy
Scott, I might shock you by admitting we have two MACs at home, oh and an iPod

Cool, I positioned it the way I did because I did not want your thread to derail into one of those " my operating system is better than yours" debates.

That would not have helped you at all.

The best thing to buy is what fits your needs. Yo know best if your needs are $300, $500 or $1,000.

Good Luck and have fun with it.

Scott

[lendaddy]

I ended up going with the Sony (the miniDV one). I only spent $270 so if it completely dies I'm not going to be terribly upset. The picture is fine (though low light does screw up the colors) for what I want it for which is just saving memories and showing the kids how goofy they were a couple decades form now

I am really amazed that they can make this thing so cheaply, it appears very well engineered and the touch screen operation is fairly intuitive. The zoom is good and the image stabilization really does work.

I opted against the version that also takes stills (for $75 more) as everything I read says they are aweful quality pics until you get into $1k+ cams.

The stock battery sucks ( 40 minutes) and I need to buy the 2 hour battery and I think it's around $100 itself.

Overall I'm very happy with the purchase and will be using the heck out of it over the next few weeks as my oldest turns three this Sunday and then of course we have Christmas.

The "sheen" has already worn off as far as it being a new toy for me to play with so I'm glad I didn't go nuts on an expensive one (my usual course of action).

[Burnin' oil]

Lendaddy,

Thanks for the update. I bought the Sony DVD camera which, so far, I like.

[azasadny]

We bought a Sony TVR 90 that uses mini DV tapes about 2 years ago and we've been very happy with it. Reliable, easy to use, nice view finder, extra batteries are cheap on eBay and it's never failed us. Whatever the newer model Sony has replaced it with is probably just as good...

[azasadny]

Lendaddy,
Oops, I didn't see that you already bought it. I hope it works out well for you!

[lendaddy]

Originally posted by Burnin' oil
Lendaddy,

Thanks for the update. I bought the Sony DVD camera which, so far, I like.

Get the high cap battery, it's like 340 minutes vs 45! Then you've got the little one for emergency backup.

I bought a self powered LED light to aid in low light situations and the damn thing broke after 2 minutes so I'm not sure if it will help or not