I am relatively new to film making and I wanted some advice on which camera I should buy for an upcoming feature I will be shooting. I decided that I want to film it in HD because from my experience, even when compressed to a DVD format it still looks better. The camera I have been looking at is the Sony HVR-HD1000U. Besides the very attractive price point, the raw footage I have seen shot with it looks great. Here is a link to the camera:
I will be doing all of my editing in FCP on a Mac. I can't spend more than $2k so let me know if I should be looking at anything else.
Thanks in advance, ME
www.magothyentertainment.com
OK, I haven't really been keeping up with HD cameras at this price point since I bought my HDR-HC1 HDV camcorder a few years ago, but here are my thoughts:
If you like the shoulder-mount design, this looks like a solid camera. If you're more concerned with portability and getting your camera in tight places, you might want to consider a smaller form factor. I am personally a big fan of shoulder-mount cameras as they feel more sturdy and can get much more stable handheld shots (and they look more impressive, which is not insignificant)
There are two major problems with this camera:
1) It uses a CMOS sensor. That's better than a single CCD, but a 3CCD camera will have far superior image quality, especially in low light. The Sony HDR-FX1 has a 3CCD design, but it's significantly more expensive.
2) It records in HDV--HDV is great in that it can fit an hour of high-definition footage on a standard-definition DV tape. The problem with this is twofold: first, it has to really compress the video to make it fit, and second, it's on a tape. Tapes are... well... a real hassle. You have to log and capture in real time, you lose them, they degrade and become corrupt. No fun.
I know this is largely unhelpful to you if you only have a budget of $2k, but I really cannot recommend the Panasonic HVX200 highly enough. It's tapeless (it records to solid-state P2 cards for no-mess transfer), it captures DVCPRO HD (much less compressed than HDV), it's got 3 CCDs, it can record in 1080p, and as a plus it's capable of overcranking up to 60fps. Unfortunately, the HVX is $2-3k over your budget, and it's the cheapest HD camera out there that doesn't record to HDV or the equally-limited AVCHD format.
The 1000U looks like a perfectly solid camera (and a big step beyond my HC1--which I shot a feature with last summer), but it seems to me quite a shame that you would spend so much money on a format that's rapidly becoming obsolete, and where an HVX will remain a perfectly viable option for years to come, I can't imagine that HDV has much of a future. So it really depends on how quickly you need the camera, versus how long you can save your money and how long you want your camera to last.
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Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com
and my reel at http://portfolio.exgfilms.com
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Andrew Gingerich
Exploding Goldfish Films
Check out my blog at http://www.exgfilms.com
and my reel at http://portfolio.exgfilms.com
