Q. Are there huge differences in the video quality you can get from a HD consumer camcorder and a little "professional" cameras...the type videographers and local news stations use on location. What are the other main differences in capability?
A. Consumer camcorders have small lenses and small imaging chip(s). This combination results in their not doing too well in low-light situations. Prosumer and pro-grade camcorders have much larger lenses and larger imaging chips.
Consumer camcorders' manual controls are generally not easily accessible. Prosumer and pro-grade camcorders have easily accessible manual zoom, manual focus, manual iris/exposure, manual shutter and manual audio controls... and neutral density filters and video gain control.
Many consumer camcorders generally do not have any mic jack or other audio-in capability other than the built-in mics. A few have a 1/8" (3.5mm) stereo mic jack (but generally no manual audio control). Prosumer models generally have a 1/8" (3.5mm) stereo mic jack with manual audio control. Pro-grade camcorders have built-in XLR audio connectors.
Consumer camcorders are generally built to be used hand-held, even though no one should ever do that. Prosumer models are larger - and while designed to be hand held, rarely are; the large ENG (Electronic News Gathering) pro models are nearly always shoulder mountable. The advantage of the shoulder mount translates into a much steadier shot - though a tripod or camera crane or other steadying device would be steadier than shoulder mount.
Other features like frame rate, interlaced vs progressive frame capture, add-on lens selection and quality, LANC (a wired remote) jack availability, matte box availability, filter selection, will also come into play.
You will also find that the vast majority of the pro camcorders use miniDV tape or save to an external hard drive that stores in DV or HDV format (same as miniDV tape). Panasonic has a few new internal hard drive or flash memory pro-grade camcorders. Red has a family of them. Sony, Canon and JVC pro lines continue to be on the DV/HDV page.
In good daylight, tripod mounted, no movement of the subject or the camera, with normal audio levels, it would be a challenge to differentiate 1080i/p 30fps video. Deviate from this, and the differences get very obvious, very quickly. Video is captured under lots of different lighting conditions, there may not be time to set up a tripod, and audio levels can be from 0 to REALLY LOUD in an instant... and the reason we capture video is for the motion...
Under many conditions, the ENG camcorder audio is not even used even though it is captured - an external field recorder (Edirol, Zoom, Marantz, M-Audio, Fostex) is used to capture the audio you end up hearing on TV and a separate audio person is employed just to be sure the audio is correctly captured.
So yes, there are huge differences - which is why a low-end consumer camcorder costs less than $300 and a decent pro camcorder can be as low as $3,000 or as high as $60,000...
But a skilled person with a low-end camcorder will always capture much better video than a non-skilled person with the most expensive camcorder...
Consumer camcorders' manual controls are generally not easily accessible. Prosumer and pro-grade camcorders have easily accessible manual zoom, manual focus, manual iris/exposure, manual shutter and manual audio controls... and neutral density filters and video gain control.
Many consumer camcorders generally do not have any mic jack or other audio-in capability other than the built-in mics. A few have a 1/8" (3.5mm) stereo mic jack (but generally no manual audio control). Prosumer models generally have a 1/8" (3.5mm) stereo mic jack with manual audio control. Pro-grade camcorders have built-in XLR audio connectors.
Consumer camcorders are generally built to be used hand-held, even though no one should ever do that. Prosumer models are larger - and while designed to be hand held, rarely are; the large ENG (Electronic News Gathering) pro models are nearly always shoulder mountable. The advantage of the shoulder mount translates into a much steadier shot - though a tripod or camera crane or other steadying device would be steadier than shoulder mount.
Other features like frame rate, interlaced vs progressive frame capture, add-on lens selection and quality, LANC (a wired remote) jack availability, matte box availability, filter selection, will also come into play.
You will also find that the vast majority of the pro camcorders use miniDV tape or save to an external hard drive that stores in DV or HDV format (same as miniDV tape). Panasonic has a few new internal hard drive or flash memory pro-grade camcorders. Red has a family of them. Sony, Canon and JVC pro lines continue to be on the DV/HDV page.
In good daylight, tripod mounted, no movement of the subject or the camera, with normal audio levels, it would be a challenge to differentiate 1080i/p 30fps video. Deviate from this, and the differences get very obvious, very quickly. Video is captured under lots of different lighting conditions, there may not be time to set up a tripod, and audio levels can be from 0 to REALLY LOUD in an instant... and the reason we capture video is for the motion...
Under many conditions, the ENG camcorder audio is not even used even though it is captured - an external field recorder (Edirol, Zoom, Marantz, M-Audio, Fostex) is used to capture the audio you end up hearing on TV and a separate audio person is employed just to be sure the audio is correctly captured.
So yes, there are huge differences - which is why a low-end consumer camcorder costs less than $300 and a decent pro camcorder can be as low as $3,000 or as high as $60,000...
But a skilled person with a low-end camcorder will always capture much better video than a non-skilled person with the most expensive camcorder...
What is the best camcorder to record instrumental performances?
Q. My husband likes to record himself when he practices percussion instruments. The problem is we need a camcorder that has good quality picture and can record the sound as it is. Some camcorders have an autoadjust in the sound so if a sound is too quiet it will make it louder and viseversa, we do not want that. We have looked at product descriptions but it didn't say that much about sound and if it does we have no clue what it is saying.
What camcorder would you suggest for us?
What camcorder would you suggest for us?
A. You need something to control the audio levels.
There are a couple of Sony (HDR-HC7, HDR-FX1, HDR,-FX7 and Canon (HV20, XHA1) to identify a few - but as you will find, they are higher-end camcorders. But all of these camcorders have manual audio control.
Another way is to control the audio externally, but this does not work quite as well - and will require in investment in external microphones in addition to the external control. Specifically, If you were to use a camcorder with a mic-in jack (like all those above or the Canon ZR800) and use an XLR adapter (like those from BeachTek - I wold suggest the DXA-6vu so you can see the audio being sent to the camcorder)... and mics that use XLR connections, then you would be OK.
The last option I can think of is to use a "field recorder". Several companies make them (M-Audio, Marantz, Fostex, among others). They have built-in mics or can connect external mics, they have manual audio-in level control and they typically record to some sort of memory card. When the video is edited in your computer, you set the audio from the camcorder video to zero and add this external audio on top of it.
There are a couple of Sony (HDR-HC7, HDR-FX1, HDR,-FX7 and Canon (HV20, XHA1) to identify a few - but as you will find, they are higher-end camcorders. But all of these camcorders have manual audio control.
Another way is to control the audio externally, but this does not work quite as well - and will require in investment in external microphones in addition to the external control. Specifically, If you were to use a camcorder with a mic-in jack (like all those above or the Canon ZR800) and use an XLR adapter (like those from BeachTek - I wold suggest the DXA-6vu so you can see the audio being sent to the camcorder)... and mics that use XLR connections, then you would be OK.
The last option I can think of is to use a "field recorder". Several companies make them (M-Audio, Marantz, Fostex, among others). They have built-in mics or can connect external mics, they have manual audio-in level control and they typically record to some sort of memory card. When the video is edited in your computer, you set the audio from the camcorder video to zero and add this external audio on top of it.
Powered by Yahoo! Answers
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar