What is a good camera for making amateur movies, and has an external microphone jack?

Question

I make amateur movies a a hobby, and I need a new camera.

One with good picture quality and has a external mic jack. I hera good things about DV cameras, but I am worried that taes are going to go the way of VHS's.

Answer 1

At this point, mini-dv is the camcorder of choice because it Takes the best quality video. It will be quite a while before the best quality media goes away. The 3CCD Panasonic PV-GS320 is a good buy at around $400 ($380 at Circuit City right now). But does not have an external mic.

Answer 2

VHS is analog. The video quality is not so good.

The "DV" in miniDV is "Digital Video". The quality is excellent and is the least compressed video stream - this results in best available video quality.

Take the queue from the professionals:

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBus...

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/contro...

http://www.panasonic.com/business/provid...

They use miniDV tape. If any hard drive is used, it store in DV or HDV format - which is the same as the format used by miniDV tape. NONE of them use DVD based camcorders.

What is your budget? In addition to an external mic jack, I suggest that you also try to get manual audio control...

The cameras with external mic jacks:

Canon ZR950, ZR800 (no manual audio controls)

Sony DCR-HC28, HC96 (no manual audio control, but you can switch the mic gain from normal to low to do loud noises like bands without overdriving the audio auto-leveling circuit resulting in a pile of muddy audio. You will also need http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/47... so you can use any mic and not just the Sony proprietary mics for the Active Interface shoe.)

Canon HV20, HV30; Sony HDR-HC7, HD9

As long as miniDV tape is cheap, provides the least compression (hence best quality), has the best shelf life for long-term storage and is easiest to transfer using firewire (not USB) to a computer for editing, the format will be around... In my book, that is many years...