What’s a good video camera to buy that’s good quality but not like 3000 dollars?

I’m just sick of shooting short films with my mom’s old piece of crap camera and then the video’s are all grainy and look like crap no matter how good or bad they are. I’d like one with really good video quality that’s around maybe 1000, hopefully less.

Canon’s HV20 or HV30 is a real winner in the consumer market. The low light performance and image quality has set it on top against others in it’s price range as well as having a good amount of manual control.

I own the HV20 which can be had for around $650 on ebay. It’s a very impressive camcorder for being so cheap. The new HV30 is about $850 and is differentiated from the HV20 by offering 30p. The one single drawback is the mic placement. I ended up buying the $150 Rode “Video Mic” for better audio.

Depending on your shooting preferences, and if you don’t care about progressive shooting, some of the HDD camcorders are coming down in price. If you go with a HDD cam, make sure you have compatable software and also that you don’t get stuck in a situation where you want to record more video but the camcorder’s hard drive is full.

I personally chose the HV20 because it offers 24p, I have software that edits HD footage, the DV codec is more robust for motion and keying, and any NLE all the way down to Windows Movie Maker will except the DV format (Standard Definition).

If you get an HD cam but don’t have a NLE capable of HD, you will more than likely have to shoot in SD. I don’t know of any consumer HD cam that’ll allow you to shoot HD and downconvert to SD.

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