Most any HD, HDV or ACVHD camera – from tape, to hard drive, to SDHC or other solid state card – on the market today will do the job, generally speaking. You will experience more, or less, problems depending on the camera, its capabilities and engineering and technical features and limitations. All-in-all, using appropriate lighting, audio acquisition, shooting and stabilization techniques, the new cameras on the shelf will do the job.
A Rhode videocam shotgun would probably help, and is reasonably priced.
Any number of mid-range, mid-priced wired or wireless lavs and systems will work.
A solidly-built tripod with legs that don’t sway, flex or give a lot during pans, tilts, etc. and do not tend to spread or splay when you inadvertently lean on them for a bit. I think tripods in the $500 and up range are better suited to stable solid shooting than lighter and cheaper choices.
An NRG, or similar, three-light kit or something rigged from available components at Home Depot, WalMart or other stores, will serve you well.
I am a Mac user with FCP and related software. I am happy and pleased with my Mac editing systems, even my old and trusty stand-alone Casablanca editor in a pinch, but I’ve much good regarding PC based Vegas. You can accomplish decent web and even general market video production with the items listed here.
When you talk about depth of field adapters and other auxiliary items you begin to enter a whole new level of expense, needs and special editing/camera quality and abilities.
I do not know what “normal” translates in PC, but I suspect that if you are on the lower end of processor power and RAM memory, and storage capabilities, you will be hitting some production walls shortly, requiring that you do some further research and upgrading.
Keeping it simple, and understanding I have no solid information regarding PC/editing software capabilities, needs and pricing, the rest of your stuff should come in around $2.5K to $3.5K. There’s cheaper, and there’s more expensive, better and worse, but I believe these amounts would bring you to a production level you would want for these training videos.
