The age old question - which camera? (£3000, $5500)

[b_sirc]

Hi all

First off, i'll introduce myself. I'm Chris. Live in England. I've been writing scripts for a few years now and have enjoyed seeing them being made. However, i am now in a position to afford to purchase a camera. With it i want to direct my own shorts and hopefully other writer's shorts too.

I'm currently looking at buying a camera for no more than £3000 - that's roughly $5500. So far i have found (lowest price first);

SONY HDR-FX7
Canon XH-A1
SONY HVR-V1E

Just wanting to find out from some of your personal experiences of these cameras - what are the main differences, strengths, weaknesses. I'll be printing out spec sheets and watching more footage, but it'd be cool to gage your reaction and opinions on these cameras. Or perhaps suggest others you may think are worth considering.

As for cost, the way i see it is this...if i'm going to be spending thousands, then the few hundred pounds between them isn't going to bother me. But £3000 is the limit.

I'll be editing with final cut pro on a 2.66ghz, 4gb ram, IMac. I've read from users that good spec Imac's are capable of handling HD. I'll be making short films, i won't burden it with a feature. I'd like comments from anyone editing HD on Imac as well.

Thanks a lot

Chris

[lawriejaffa]

Well you can also get a used hvx200 with a couple o' p2 cards for that money too, otherwise id be tempted for the canon myself so far ;)

They'll all be good for your first short films tho!

[Quickbrownfox]

Chris,

Go for the Canon, it's much better in low light, has a bigger sensor an therefor less noise. I work with both so I know what I'm saying. You can also look at the new Panasonic HMC 151 (Pal version of the 150). Works only with SD card, read first the forum: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?p=1389643#post1389643 because there is an issue to transfer the footage into FCP.
The camera will be release in October.

[Jhundiboy]

The FX7 doesnt have an XLR input, if i remember correctly, so im not sure what you'd do sound-wise. On that note, do you already have the rest of the gear you're going to need? Ie; tripod, mics etc? If not, youll need to factor those into your budget aswell, as even a low end setup will probably eat up around 15% of your money.

Id say stick with the canon, unless you do want to go down the second hand route, then you open yourself up to a lot more options, HVX's, Z1's and so on.