What is your realistic expectation for the final prodect? We all hope out movies will end up in the theaters - but we also need to take a serious, realistic look at where it will end up.

I can give you lots of recommendations because I have used many different cameras. When you say "but won't cost a fortune" what exactly do you mean? How much can you spend per week on a camera package that you feel isn't a fortune?

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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

Our realistic expectation is for the project to be shown in local independent theatres, campus theatres and possibly at short film festivals. Cost is up in the air because we're still raising money. We're shooting only on weekends which are one day rentals at most places around here. For video equipment, we're looking at $300/day. I understand that shooting HD there are a lot of post-production concerns, so that may not be an option for us. On the other hand, if we do shoot on HD and are forced to convert it down to miniDV in post, we still have the HD quality footage if for some reason we decided to transfer to film later on. Save our EDL in post and it shouldn't be a problem, am I right? We're being very realistic with this project. We know that our film may bomb and it may just end up on a burned DVD.

Okay. So realistically you will need to do a video to film transfer.

At $300/day you just cannot rent a good enough video camera. True HighDef cameras are more expensive. With proper lighting you can get an acceptable image on MiniDV and with a high tech, very expensive film transfer it can look pretty good.

Frankly these costs are almost the same as shooting on film.

Hopefully someone else will be able to offer better advice. I just don't know of any true HD cameras that rent in that range.

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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

If we don't go with HD. What are good alternatives to miniDV?

There's the two Beta formats you mention and DVCPro and DVCam. But none of these cameras will rent in the $300/day range and you'll still end up with the video to film transfer costs that will cause your budget to soar to almost the same as shooting on film.

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The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert, essayist (1754-1824)

I'm not getting how the transfer could up the cost so much since you'd be able to shoot as much DV as you like at low cost, edit it down to the final length, and then only transfer the finished product to film.

Certainly that's gotta be a lot cheaper and easier than filming carefully as not to waste film, pay for dailys and developing everything?

Personally I'd take four days worth of that $300 a day rental budget and go to eBay and buy a Canon XL-1. It's not HD but its' high quality, can shoot in 40 frame full frame mode to make transfers easier,and when the shoot is over you own the camera. Depending upon your financing you could even rent the camera to yourself on the next project like the big wigs do with their various costs.

you might as well get the XL2 and shoot in 24 fps.

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