HD Movie Camera

[TEEJAY]

I am looking to get a high definition movie camera in the next few weeks and was wondering if anyone has any tips?

I am currently thinking SONY 40GB or JVC 40GB - about $1000

Any feedback welcome as to whether I am heading in the right direction - I am not after anything more than a good camera for family recording.

I assume a HD movie can still be played on ordinary resolution televisions but just loses clarity from the screen, however when played on a high resolution television then the greater clarity is realised?

[TEEJAY]

Okay, I bought the Sony 40GB HDD for $1014. And yes although it can record in HD it will also record at lower resolution or burn to a disc in lower resolution to allow a dvd to play it on a normal television as a HD require a special disc and "blue-ray" to record and play to a high resolution television.

So there you go. I am sure i will learn some more over the next months when i try to use the sucker - and am sure I will never reach the full potential of it.

Have a teenager and a 4yo so it will get used and abused sometime too I imagine. :rolleyes:

[dai sensei]

Let us know how it goes TJ, I've been thinking about getting one for a while, but was waiting for the technology to improve and costs come down even more.

[DavidG]

Ordinary res uses about 12gb per hour of uncompressed data :o

Digital tape is still the best store as you can change tapes real fast and it is uncompressed.

Most video recorders compress the pix which reduces quality.

[q9]

And yes although it can record in HD it will also record at lower resolution or burn to a disc in lower resolution to allow a dvd to play it on a normal television as a HD require a special disc and "blue-ray" to record and play to a high resolution television.


Unless you really need the space always record HD. We found HD recording (admittedly on a much more expensive Sony professional camera) resulted in better quality vision regardless of the target format - SD, streaming clips, etc. And as a bonus the stills are high enough in quality to make good images for artwork, prints, etc.

For home use I don't know that I'd be worried about loss of quality for home use. Weigh that up against the speed of getting the media into your computer and then time to edit (no digitising!) and I think the convenience of hard disk will win. Most of the professional cameras are using hard disk now for exactly that reason, though they are uncompressed.