Video Camera for Youtube channel?

Question

I am starting a youtube channel where i'll be interviewing local people in my community. What camera do you recommend? What else do I need...tripod.. mics. New to Youtube and video production. I am a mac user to the camera must be compatible. Thank you for your help!

Answer 1

It depends on your budget and what sort of videos you want to do.

Mr Safety makes good recommendations with affordable equipment:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=OePFgmyvnWo

Good lighting is important.

The best way (including working with Macs) would be to have a camcorder that has a mic in jack and manual audio control and uses miniDV tape. The cheapest cameras that meet all these requirements are the Canon HV20, HV30, Sony HDR-HC7 and HC9.

MiniDV tape based camcorder provide best available video quality because DV and HDV compress less than any of the other storage methods (this includes hard drive, flash memory and DVD based camcorders). Video compression = lost data = reduced video quality.

Most camcorders do not have manual audio control.

You will probably want to use decent mics, to. They will typically be XLR based - so you will need an XLR adapter. I use a BeachTek DXA-6... and I do all my editing on Macs (iMovie or FinalCut, depending on the project requirements).