My budget just dropped to $1000.00. Now which camera?

[Anonymous]

Guys, I had the shopping cart ready for checkout at BHphotovideo and got a call from my wife.
I recently posted my situation here:

http://www.videomaker.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3918

But the circumstances have changed. Bottom line, my $2000 budget quickly turned into $1000

….so…. I obviously have to buy a lower-end consumer grade camera than the GL2.

With $1000.00 I need to buy:

A camera
A handheld mic and a lav. (is this possible with a lower-end consumer cam?)
Some halogen work lights and flourescents from Lowe’s
Some green material
Tapes
Anything else I forgot?

My question is regarding the camera choice and the microphone choice (if possible on a handheld consumer cam)

Any thoughts? I was thinking maybe the Sony DCR-SR?
My goal is to create good looking and sounding videos (as good as possible) with a $1000 spending budget.

[Anonymous]

Hmmm… $1000 limit for everthing? 😕

It would be very desirable to have a camcorder that allowed you to manually adjust microphone volume. Canon used to have several in the Optura line. I’m not sure that they still offer any such products. Maybe look for a used Optura 50, 60, or 300. (BTW, the Optura’s had nice color reproduction, even though they were single CCD units.) The Panasonic DVC7 ($999.95 at B&H) I mentioned before allows manually setting mic volume, but as someone else posted, its single-CCD gives mediocre ChromaKey performance.

Regarding mics: Many handheld mics are dynamic instead of condenser. If you get a dynamic mic, see if you could try it with your camcorder 1st, to be sure the signal is strong enough. All shotgun mics I’ve seen are condenser, so their signals should be strong.

Chroma-Key.com sells 11-foot wide green fabric for $17.75/yard (+ tax and shipping, of course). I’m happy with the 11’x9′ green material I got from them. BTW, you’d have to get some lumber and make a frame.

Good luck! 🙂
Ken Hull

[Anonymous]

I’m not very skilled in this sort of thing :-// . But we got a Panasonic NV-GS300 + p&p for $1000.
But if you can only spend $1000 you might not be able to get it. Maybe a Panasonic NV-GS 180? It’s still 3CCD
and you can get them on ebay for about $750-$800. Just do what works best for you and good luck 🙂

[Anonymous]

Sony Digital Handycams are nice, and they run under $400.

[Author]

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