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Need advice on inexpensive second digital camera
I currently shoot with a Panasonic GH2. I’m looking for an inexpensive second digital camera to set up during interviews and such so that I can get a different angle to do multicamera interview editing in SV to give my final videos more visual interest.
I shoot 1080p/24fps for my work, so I would think the other camera I got would need to do the same. But, the GH2 is a 16 mp camera, would the other camera I get need to be 16mp as well?
Does anyone have any recommendations for an inexpensive (less than $200) digital camera to do this?
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9 Replies
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Less than $200 for an HD Camera?… Dont know where you
gonna find an HD cam for that, that produces decent footage.Steve Rhoden
(Cow Leader)
Film Editor & Compositor.
Filmex Creative Media.
1-876-832-4956 -
That might be asking a lot at that price, but I’ve heard several sites recommend GoPros, which are pretty inexpensive.
https://gopro.com/hd-hero-cameras/
http://www.scenethroughglass.com
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I have a Sony Bloggie and it produces very good pictures. It fits your price range although it only comes with small memory card. To upgrade to a 16 Gig sd card can cost as much as the camera.
There’s not much to adjust, mainly the picture format. It is AVCHD, the color seems to be processed so the clips recorded seem to be “better” than when you recorded it. The clips edit well in svp 10. -
I use a Sony HDR CX110 as a backup camera, but with memory card will be about $400. It can shoot full HD at 24 mbps, and you can reduce that to 17 or 9 or even 5 mbps via the menu. It is tiny and unobtrusive and runs off SD HC cards.
I use it when I do stage work and mount it on my main camera offset slightly to the right using a bracket that connects to my hotshoe. I operate my main camera and occasionally adjust the framing to get a two shot on the CX 110 whilst I go in for the tighter one shot with the primary camera. You can get some really nice dissolves or superimpose two shots.
The same principle applies to an interview situation where I can lock both off with different framing. That way I can keep an eye on both cameras and only use 1 tripod.
My system specs: Intel i7 970, 12GB RAM, ASUS P6T, Vegas Pro 10e (x32/x64), Windows 7 x64 Ultimate, Vegas Production Assistant 1.0, VASST Ultimate S Pro 4.1, Neat Video Pro 2.6
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The Sony CX series are good cameras at around $299. I have a CX-110 for home movies and it’s a great little camera (now discontinued but you can still find them for around $269). At $200 you’ll only get something like my Kodak Zi8 which takes nice shots, edits smoothly in Vegas, but really needs a lot of light to get a useful image. This is not something I would take on a shoot.
Whatever you get, make sure that you can edit the footage in Vegas because at that price range, the manufacturers do not follow any standards and put out a lot of junk formats and wacky frame rates that can’t be edited.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
I checked out the Sony Bloggie. Not too bad!
My only question is when my SV projects are 24fps, and I bring in a clip that’s 30fps, how does that work in Vegas? Will the 30fps portion of the project degrade upon rendering?
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well it does work; I took some HDV 1080-50i ( 25 fps Pal) footage into a match settings project; put a short 1080 30p clip in the middle and rendered to 24 fps BluRay. I previewed in DVDA and it all looked ok.
I imagine there was some loss of quality as you are throwng a few frames but vegas seemed quite happy with the mix.
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[Ron Whitaker] “Will the 30fps portion of the project degrade upon rendering?”
Actually, it would be the other way around. If you were rendering 24fps to match a 30fps project it will synthesize new frames which could be seen as a form of degredation. Going from 30fps to 24fps can simply drop frames which shouldn’t be any worse than recording in 24p to begin with. You may have to Disable Resample on the 30fps events to make sure Vegas drops frames and doesn’t blend them.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
I don’t think you’re going to find any camera at ~$200 that does acceptable HD video, particularly something you’d want to cut in with your GH2 video. The GH2 is one of the best mirrorless EVIL models for video — you’re probably getting the quality of a fairly high end camcorder… think $5K+ range.
A $200 consumer camcorder or P&S pretty much looks like a $200 consumer camera. You’re probably limited to 30p or 60i, no 24p, though that’s not the end of the world. But the quality is going to be a significant issue. Certainly way better than such did five years ago, but I would go a different way.
Why not pick up a lower-end M43 body? Assuming you have a few lenses to play around with, you can get a new Panasonic GF3 body for $350, or a used GF1 or GF3 for just over $200. I’d recommend the Olympus bodies too, but since you’re already on Panasonic, the way seems clear. I don’t think any of these cheaper models do 24p either (which seems just a firmware issue, but Panny’s like many companies and artifically limits the cheaper models).
The sensor size itself doesn’t matter… you’re asking about HD video, which is 2Mpixel once recorded, no matter whether you’re starting with a 2Mpixel sensor or a 20Mpixel sensor. Anything over 8Mpixel is theoretically large enough for pixel bucketing, to eliminate the color issues you can have with a single Bayer sensor.
Particularly for an interview, you’re not likely to notice 30p or 60i either resampled or drop-framed to 24p. I’d far prefer doing that, with very high quality video, than ping-ponging between pristine video and something fuzzy and intended only for YouTube.
The one exception on my scathing trashing of low cost cameras are the GoPros, which do have a decent video quality. Part of that’s because they’re spending nearly all the money on the sensor (there’s not even a viewfinder) and the fixed wide angle lens (the new one has a lossless digital zoom; the sensor is actually 11Mpixel, so they offer three different crops for 1080p video. No 24p here either, though the new model does 480/120p). This is fine for the typical sports/throw-away use of these little beasts, but not something I would think of for your application.
-Dave
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