Want to begin making films, What Camera would be the best choice?

Question

I'm a photographer and have learned a lot about light and composition. I want to buy a professional video camera but I'm stumped on which one to purchase.

I see the

HV-20

Gl-2

both by canon

What I want is great quality, a universal format that will be easy when editing.

as far as price range I would like to go no higher than 2grand but if its worth it I'll go over it.

I don't really know much about these video cameras since I've never owned one or have had a chance to experiment with one so when upon reading reviews I am not sure what the shooting modes are like 24p and 30p

thanks in advance and please excuse my ignorance

Answer 1

I would actually get the JVC EVERIO GZMS100US.  Its around $380.  I use it for skateboarding but you'll probably find another use for it.  The quality is very good and it comes with a built in light for night time filming.  It is overall a very good camera so i hope you connsider getting it.

Answer 2

No worries about your perceived ignorance. You did some homework and came up with a couple of good camcorders.

When you take a photograph, the whole frame is captured at once through the lens, onto the imaging chip, digitized and written  to the storage media... or through the lens and written to photographic paper. Film cameras would capture the entire frame, too.

In the digital camcorder world, many camcorders were designed to work in conjunction with televisions which capture the video image in lines... so 1, 3, 5, .... etc... paints, then 2, 4, 6, 8... etc paints. In a CRT, the yoke and electron gun does this really quickly resulting in what your eyes see as complete pictures and motion. In a typical camcorder, it is capturing 60 interlaced images... or 30 complete interlaced frames per second. (Actually, if you do all the math, it comes out to 29.97 fps, but it is commonly referred to as 30fps.)

Film movie cameras (as previously indicated) capture entire frames... referred to as progressive frames. For removing flicker, they generally do 24p FPS.

The GL2 is a workhorse of a camera and has been around for many years. It's been used a lot for indie documentaries. It captures standard definition DV format video to miniDV tape. It is somewhere between prosumer and pro grade.

The HV20 was the first consumer grade camcorder to capture 24p. It id a 1080i high definition (16:9 by definition) camcorder and can also capture 4:3 and 16:9 standard definition video at 60i/30fps. I don't think it does 30p - I could be wrong... I thought the HV30 did that.

There is no "universal format" video. DV and HDV is about as close as it gets - and they are typically recorded to miniDV tape. Importing video from a miniDV tape based camcorder means connecting the DV port of the camcorder to the firewire port of the computer with a firewire cable and importing the video. Firewire, IEEE1394a and i.Link are all the same thing.

Hard drive and flash memory based camcorders typically save video data files to highly compressed MPEG2 (standard definition) or even more compressed AVCHD (high definition) formats. The data files are copied over USB - and while this is faster, there are video archiving steps that should be taken that will eat up a lot of the time that was saved.

I use a Sony HDR-HC1 and HDR-FX1. If I could only choose between the GL2 and HV20... I'd probably go with the HV20. While lighting plays a big role in video and still photography,  audio plays a HUGE role in video and has no part in stills. Your next investigation should take you down the external mic path. Both the GL2 and HV20 have and external mic jack.