Looking For Camera Help

[Caboos318]

I have a few questions if you don't mind my asking. We are in the market for a good camera with a camera budget of about $2000-$2400 with a every thing we will need, like a tri-pod, filters (if needed), a long lasting battery, etc. Here are a couple i have found that look pretty good:

1. HVR A1U

2. HDR-FX7

The first one really has my interest. If you know more about cameras then i do, are these worth the money or do you have other suggestions, please let me know. I would tell you what we are looking for in a camera, but if your posting here, I'm sure you know, lol.



As for audio, we will have our cast with wireless mics. So, can 2 or 3 mics be recorded to one camera or to the same receiver?



Thanks :]

 

[Enrisan]

Well I don't know if you can afford it, but I would try to stay away from HDV footage. Some can look pretty good but you're not getting full HD quality out of them. It's shrinking the image and using a long GOP compression method to fit the larger frame size onto the same exact DV tape. Also, problems may arise during editing of HDV footage since there isn't a true frame every single frame, rather an "I" frame once every few frames, the rest are just interpolated. So if you cut on a frame that isn't an "I" frame you might get errors unless encoding all the footage to a different format.



Anyways, that's my input.

 

[Caboos318]

I have not used an HD camera befor, i didnt know it made a differenc, but if i am only planning on using DV not HDV would that still make a difference?

 

[Enrisan]

Well DV is basically standard def, while HDV is "high def". It would still look better. I'm not saying HDV is bad, you just might run into problems when editing.

 

[Caboos318]

I got the HD thing, i just didnt know they might edit differnt. Thanks :] will be caution

 

[Grim Killer]

each one has one thing better than the other like the Fx7 has better zoom, but I would go with the A1u because it has plugins you are going to need for mics and other equipment. and it already has a better mic than the other, and it has the different support for different types of shooting, 24p for film like quality and better with editing. I don't know it the other one has it.



As for HD vs SD when editing, I don't have a problem and I use Premiere Pro with After Effects. But sadly I dont have enough for one of those cameras so I deal with a consumer hd camera that is a sony.

As for your question about mics, well it depends on the mics, some mics you can buy has a receiver for them and with it multiple mics can go to one camera. SO depends on your receiver.