Watermoore
11-07-2007, 06:47 PM
I am trying to get a better 16:9 cam, possibly HD, and absolutley have to have audio in. The primary use of this camera would be to make really low budget (sometimes no budget) indy films. Its a community/ student immersion and involvement thing I do, so I do it for the experience not nessicarily to make money. Right now, I shoot on a Panasonic Ag-DVC80 its pretty similar to the DVX100a but no 24p and no squeeze mode so not much options for 16:9 other then the crappy letterbox crop thing which you all know lets me loose a third of verticle resolution. Its does have the same form factor as the DVX100 so it does have 2 XLR ins etc... anyways I want to go HDV for many reasons 1 being that most, if not all models are native 16X9, but I don't want to drop 3500.00 USD for the XH-A1 which would be my top choice. I would love the camera eventually but anyways, what seems like the best place to start is the Sony A1U. I want this exclusivley for making movies so I plan on lighting just about everything we shoot. That would work around the low light performance that I am reading is this cameras biggest weakness. I do realize that all the manual exposure controls are on a touch screen which is kind of lame but you cant win them all. Bottom line, do you guys think this would be a good starting point for a cheap HDV camera that could be utilized for making indy films? Thanks a million.