Need a second camera -- Suggestions?

M

marjamar

Well-known member
Been awhile, but I'm looking to buy a lesser expensive second camera. My DVX100a has a burnt firewire port (should of had it fixed under my extended warranty, but never did) and my backup camera died. Since I need it for tape transfer, it will need to use mini dv tape. Also, I'd like to have decent HD, 10x optical zoom (or better), fair glass, optical stabilization, fair low light ability, and not too large.

Need to keep price down to $700-$900 or so.

I'm looking pretty hard at the Canon VIXIA HV40 as it seems to have about what I need. Might even fill in for a B-roll camera as well since it does have 24P Cinema Mode (still waiting for my 100 bucks BTW :Drogar-Happy(DBG):). B&H has it for $699 and free overnight shipping right now :love4:.

What else should I look at?

-Rodger
 
Honestly, the VIXIA is probably exactly what you're looking for based on your checklist.

An HV30 or HV40 is by no means a "PRO" video production tool, but I think they are great for where they are positioned, and the images can be very good under the right conditions.

~DPS
 
Got it in a few hours ago and have had alot of fun so far. This thing really has some good looking stuff coming out of it. Shot some 24F footage and it is extremely sharp and has very accurate and balanced color across the full frame. Where was this chip when the DVX100 came out:crybaby:. It is awfully small however, and my big hands just about hide it entirely. Tomorrow I'll be using it around the tree, so I'll get alot of color and alot of movement to see how it likes that.

Couple of things so far...

Vegas 8.0 doesn't know exactly what to do with the HDV 24F footage. I think it thinks its grouped stills or something as every second or so it makes a new clip and each clip seems to be just a few non-moving stills until the next clip. Premiere CS3 captures fine however. Will be some learning to do on editing with this one. Enough settings I think to make this a very useful tool, but not alot of variance within them.

-Rodger
 
I am not sure how canon has done their 24p mode, but it might need to capture with the pulldown correction... Try the 23.94 capture.
 
Going back to tape is also not working. This is footage shot in 24F, captured in Premiere CS3 and sent back to the camera via firewire. Neither Premiere or Vegas 8.0 get the footage back into the camera. Both access the camera controls (properly it seems) and try to record, but both error out with the camera displaying something like "CHECK HDV/DV INPUT" and nothing is recorded.

Haven't tried other capture modes, but any footage is transcoded to HDV during transfer operation anyway, so I don't think it would matter.

-Rodger
 
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