First videocamera, YT music videos, €500 - €2000. What would you get?

[Philston]

Hi folks,

So, I'm a total newbie at videocameras. I've done my share of Googling, asking more experienced people, and searching these forums. I'll also be visiting a few stores in the coming days, to see what salesmen say. I'd love to get some opinions of this forum, too.

I'm a musician looking to start shooting semi-professional looking music videos regularly for YouTube. Indoors, static camera on tripod, with a nice looking 'decor' in the background, solo as well as duo/trio videos. Shooting distance of <3m, scene I'm shooting against will be about 2m. Here's a nice example.

- My budget is flexible, but I don't want to spend more than I need to. I would just like the quality to be on par with the upper segment of home-video music channels, like the example above, and I'm looking for the biggest bang-for-buck price point
- I realise I'll need to learn a lot, but I'm not looking to become a pro cameraman - I'm a musician first and foremost. Biggest bang for buck learning curve-wise, here
- I've been told, and I've experienced, that handheld (photocamera model) cameras can't record more than 15 minutes of video - something about the FAT32 system. But pretty much all the 'Top 10 cameras for YouTube' and so on recommend these models. What am I missing here? What I like to do is record a bunch of takes in one go without having to clear the SD card in between takes. Helps one stay in the flow.
- I'll be recording the sound through an audio interface linked up to my computer, so I won't need good onboard mics or XLR inputs
- Budget includes external light (don't want to be dependant on daylight) and any lenses I might need. Recommendations more than welcome!

Hope this forum can shed some light on these questions. Any other is advice is also much appreciated!

Thanks in advance,
Philip

[loster]

The 15 minute time limit issue is due to taxes IIRC. Some jurisdictions would tax the camera more as a "professional" or video/camecorder. You can get around that by using aftermarket firmware for Nikon and probably Canon.
Nikon Hackers has firmware for this for Nikon and Magic Lantern is for Canon.
Personally the Nikon Firmware has not been updated in a while and did not support the latest firmware for the D3200 so I never installed it.
DSLRs generally had issues with auto-focus speed due to the optics being optimized for still photography I'm not sure how true that is now though.