Whats a good quality camera?
- Thread starter paki123
- Start date
Jeff Anderson
Custom Title!
How cheap? My Cheap is 5000. Another cheap may be 25,000 or 300. And what to do you want to do with this camera?
bandoftheland
Member
It's simple.
The best cameras let the filmmaker make the film. In other words, a $100 camera may have astounding resolution (some Aiptek cameras have 1080i high definition, which is very high), but may be uncontrollable manually. This leads to a lot of amateurish camera errors that you might not even notice, but festival judges will.
However, most cheap cameras let you avoid this, but they do it in the most annoying way possible. Some cameras let you avoid focusing problems, but make it REALLY difficult, by putting the controls on a touchscreen. This is why you need a camera with a focusing ring in front of the lens. Some cameras let you change brightness, but make you do it on a touch screen, or worse, a joystick. It's best to get cameras that let you do this on individual switches, that require no screen whatsoever.
Then you need a camera with a microphone jack (or do what Robert Rodriguez did and use a tape recorder to get audio), otherwise you can't use good microphones, and the audio will be far more amateur. You also need one with a headphone jack (though this isn't as needed for starter filmmakers, as I never had one, though desperately needed one).
Remember when using good microphones, you also need a boom pole to hold them up close on the scene, which gets way better audio.
Also remember that no camera is perfect. You'll rarely get all these features in a cheap camera, so it's best to work with what's possible. My Panasonic PV-GS500 is far from perfect, and only $700, but it has three chips, so I can get a more realistic image. My first two cameras only had one chip. I made about a hundred short films with those, and a few actually came out fine, as long as I had a good set, good lighting, good actors, and on the technical side, good editing and color correction.
Everyone will tell you to get a High Definition camera, and while it's a good idea, it's slightly overrated. I recently talked to someone who just won an award at a film festival in NYC, and he started his film on a cheap consumer standard/low definition camera. He realized it was an important project, so he bought a $3,000 camera, which was DVX100, I believe. That still shoots standard definition, which is nowhere near even those new Aiptek things. However, the new Aiptek things don't produce award winning films, because they don't let you make your film or tell your story. But you still can't be sure. I recently showed my photography portfolio to a professional photographer. It featured a picture taken with a Kodak Easyshare digital point-and-shoot. She thought I had shot it on 35mm and cross-processed it in the darkroom. That shows you what editing can do.
The best cameras let the filmmaker make the film. In other words, a $100 camera may have astounding resolution (some Aiptek cameras have 1080i high definition, which is very high), but may be uncontrollable manually. This leads to a lot of amateurish camera errors that you might not even notice, but festival judges will.
However, most cheap cameras let you avoid this, but they do it in the most annoying way possible. Some cameras let you avoid focusing problems, but make it REALLY difficult, by putting the controls on a touchscreen. This is why you need a camera with a focusing ring in front of the lens. Some cameras let you change brightness, but make you do it on a touch screen, or worse, a joystick. It's best to get cameras that let you do this on individual switches, that require no screen whatsoever.
Then you need a camera with a microphone jack (or do what Robert Rodriguez did and use a tape recorder to get audio), otherwise you can't use good microphones, and the audio will be far more amateur. You also need one with a headphone jack (though this isn't as needed for starter filmmakers, as I never had one, though desperately needed one).
Remember when using good microphones, you also need a boom pole to hold them up close on the scene, which gets way better audio.
Also remember that no camera is perfect. You'll rarely get all these features in a cheap camera, so it's best to work with what's possible. My Panasonic PV-GS500 is far from perfect, and only $700, but it has three chips, so I can get a more realistic image. My first two cameras only had one chip. I made about a hundred short films with those, and a few actually came out fine, as long as I had a good set, good lighting, good actors, and on the technical side, good editing and color correction.
Everyone will tell you to get a High Definition camera, and while it's a good idea, it's slightly overrated. I recently talked to someone who just won an award at a film festival in NYC, and he started his film on a cheap consumer standard/low definition camera. He realized it was an important project, so he bought a $3,000 camera, which was DVX100, I believe. That still shoots standard definition, which is nowhere near even those new Aiptek things. However, the new Aiptek things don't produce award winning films, because they don't let you make your film or tell your story. But you still can't be sure. I recently showed my photography portfolio to a professional photographer. It featured a picture taken with a Kodak Easyshare digital point-and-shoot. She thought I had shot it on 35mm and cross-processed it in the darkroom. That shows you what editing can do.