Excepting the professional shooter, I find that there are three distinct types of people who buy videocameras. The first type tends to buy a videocamera much as they’d buy a “throw away” camera. They’ll use it a few times, watch the video on their TV screen and then put it away, maybe to be dragged out ready for the next holiday. There is no ambition to edit anything particularly and the videocamera footage is used to occasionally re-live memories.
The second group has a lot of fun with their purchase and want to make something permanent of their movies to watch again and again. They want to add titles and music, cut out unnecessary footage and possibly burn their movie to DVD for long term storage.
The third group borders on that dreadful term “prosumer” and these are those buyers who become all enthusiastic over their new hobby and want to learn and experiment as much as they can. Some even have a go at making money out of their new found interest and turn their hand to shooting the occasional wedding, sporting event, birthday and so on. Others take a bigger step and make short films for inclusion in such festivals as Australian Tropfest, Flickerfest or even Sundance.
But the long and short of it is that you have to start somewhere. So here is a guide to the basic do’s and don’ts of the fabulous world we call video-making.
The Videocamera
Of course without a basic videocamera, you have nothing to shoot with and yes, I know that dinky little digital still camera you have can take video but we’re talking Proper Video now, not mostly un-editable low resolution stuff. And herein lies lesson number one; while still cameras can take video and videocameras can in the most part take stills, the reality is they should each be used for what they’re designed for and only used in the “other” mode at an extreme pinch. (Yes I know there are exceptions as technology gets better. There are now videocameras that will take 5 megapixel stills for example, but we’re talking here of typical gear).
I’m assuming at this point that you haven’t purchased your new videocamera. You’ve looked around but are somewhat confused as to which to get; MiniDV, DVD, HDD, HDV, MPEG, SD, 3CCD, AVCHD – what does it all mean? I’m soooo confused!!!
The most common format (although this is changing), is the MiniDV based DV videocamera. This uses a small cassette tape to store footage and has traditionally been the basic unit most people started with. They’re relatively cheap, easy to use, easy to get footage on to a PC for editing and there are plenty of models to choose from. The major manufacturers are Sony, Canon, Panasonic, JVC and Samsung.
Next is the DVD based videocamera as made by all those manufacturers mentioned plus Hitachi. These don’t use a standard DVD, but a smaller 8cm version to record your scenes. The advantage of DVD is that it has instant playback capability and is easy to use. The drawbacks are that editing from these videocameras is not as easy as from tape based models, blank DVDs are relatively expensive compared to tape and finally, as the format used – MPEG2 – is highly compressed, quality is not as good as the tape based AVI format. Simply, if you really have no desire to shoot and then perform extensive edits like adding titles, transitions, music, effects and so on, opt for a DVD based videocamera.
The third type of videocamera is hard disk based, and at this point models exist from JVC, Sony and Hitachi. All of these store your footage in the MPEG2 format that DVD’s use. But they can store a lot of it because the hard disk typically stores 30GB. This of course presents another problem. To get all that data off you need a PC or laptop handy. But this, I think, is the way of the future.
The final type uses a memory card of some description (SD, XD, CF, Memory Stick and so on) to store footage. At time of writing, Canon, Toshiba and Panasonic has models on the market (which are 3CCD) – other manufacturers decided some time back it was not a format they wanted to follow at this time. But as the cost of media drops in price and capacity increases (Sony today announced an 8GB Memory Stick) this could change quickly. For instance, Sandisk believes that it won’t be long before we buy a new memory card each time we use our still camera, then lock it and put it away.
3CCD? What’s that have to do with anything you ask? Without getting too technical the majority of videocameras have a single CCD (in some cases a CMOS but that’s another story). The CCD (or CMOS) is what processes the light that becomes the image stored on the tape, SD card, DVD or hard disk. So, again in simple terms, three CCD’s are better than one due to the fact each CCD processes a single colour (Red, Green and Blue). (CCD stands for Charge-Coupled Device, but that’s getting a bit technical for now.)
Now it’s important to understand that I’m not saying that anything but tape based is B-A-D. Not so. You need to work out exactly what you want your videocamera to do; for quick, point, shoot and playback plus record to permanent DVD on an occasional basis, then a DVD videocamera will do fine. If you only want to point and shoot and play back and burn to DVD, but the volume of footage is going to be higher, choose a hard disk based unit. SD based videocameras are designed for ease of use along the same lines as hard disk based videocameras but with less capacity.
It’s therefore not rocket surgery to see that if you want your film-making to grow into a hobby and even perhaps a small part time business, tape based videocameras are the go (at the moment).
But which one?
Formats
Once the type of videocamera has been decided upon, the next to consider is the format to be used. If you have your heart on a DVD based unit, at this stage, you’re pretty much locked into MPEG2. However, if a tape based videocamera is your choice, the next task is to decide whether to use MiniDV SD (standard definition) or MiniDV HD (high definition).
There are two main reasons you would go straight to HD and two why you wouldn’t.
Quite simply, the image is stunning; even TV studio personnel have said HDV rivals their broadcast camera quality in many cases. Secondly, you’re future proofing yourself with the entire world, albeit slowly but at gathering pace, switching to high definition in the form of plasma and LCD screens, Blu-ray and HD DVD recorders / players and so on. And with HD you get the best of both worlds as you can downsample when capturing so that you’re working and editing in SD.
Why would you do this? Well the drawback of HD at the moment is having some way to store it to play it back.
And why would you not go HD up front?
Well, costs and choice spring to mind for a start. Sony used to have the HDV game sewn up but Canon and Panasonic have recently entered that fray. The new specification called AVCHD could change all this as most major manufacturers have signed licensing agreements and Sony and Panasonic have models already. Editing is still an problem for AVCHD however.
While a basic tape based SD videocamera can be bought for as little as AUD$449, an HD based unit will give you little change from AUD$2000 even after discounts, so that would be an issue for many. Secondly, to capture and edit HD needs a fair amount of computing grunt so it may necessary for a PC upgrade to accommodate this, all adding to the budget.
Conclusion
So in summary, after setting a budget, do the following:
· Create a list of all uses the videocamera may be pressed into action for.
· Decide if you ever want to edit, add music, titles and so on.
· Consider what light you’ll be mainly shooting in.
· Consider whether your holidays are to far flung places (where buying blank 8cm DVD’s may be difficult for example).
· Go to a camera store and hold and play with different brands / styles. Find out what feels comfortable – you may be holding it for along time so this is important.
· Ask lots of questions (www.australasianvideocamera.info/bbs is a good place!)
· Research.
· Don’t be pressured into buying immediately.
Features
While not every user will need these features on a videocamera, in a perfect world, to cover all circumstances, out of the box, a videocamera would have at least these features:
· External microphone socket
· Headphone socket
· Manual and auto white balance
· Manual and auto focus (with a focussing ring)
· Manual and auto aperture (iris) settings
· Generic hot shoe for third party external mics, lights and so on
· Range of heavy duty batteries
· Tripod socket and locking pin
· LCD flip out, functional in sunlight
· Extendable viewfinder that tilts and has optical adjustment
· 10 – 20x optical zoom
· Optical image stabilisation
· 3 CCD's
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