Looking for new camera

[Mark Smith]

Greetings all –

I really like my consumer D8 Sony Handycam DRV240 a lot! Love the in/out choices, the S-video, composite A/V, FireWire, USB, the mic in. The only thing I’m not crazy about is the zoom feature (W/T). Too quick. Too narrow. Too small. I want to be able to zoom more slowly when needed, instead of trying too hard to barely move my zoom to make it move slowly. When I barely move it, it zooms way too fast for me. Not good shooting.

Also my FireWire stopped working I like my Pinnacle Studio 9+ software, but now I can’t bring that in. Only analog. For digital I have to use another non-prefered program that brings in the USB. And the two (Pixela, WinMM) with USB, captures in mpeg. I prefer to edit in .avi.

I just came into some $. Could you intelligent people point me in a direction that could be a step up for me in the camcorder department please? I’m not too privy about the subject.

I’m aware that I could be venturing into the professional line, but I’m not really sure. Need to look first. I thought I’d start here. I like D8, but perhaps will need to go to miniDV tape or HDV. And as handy as the HDD cams seem, they only save in mpeg. Yes?

Thank you!

[Soopafresh]

Canon HV20 or HV30

HV20 Footage:

http://www.vimeo.com/325709

HV30 Footage:

http://www.vimeo.com/777514

Mpeg2 will be easier to edit than AVCHD - the other HD standard. You can easily run an app to convert your MPEG2 Transport stream files to whatever AVI format you wish. I've got an automated script that converts them to AVI, I'll post the thing if you're interested. It's a great camera. The HV30 is on sale at Best Buy until Saturday for $925. You can get the older HV20 for around $750 via mail order or if you search around.

[racer-x]

Here's an even better example of HV30 footage:

http://www.vimeo.com/770502

I really like the colors in this one, but it's Pal 25p and it doesn't work well with panning......