Digital Camera with best Movie Camera Features

[Panda]

Hi,

I would like to buy a digital camera with real good movie camera features or vica a versa.

Can anyone steer me in the right direction as I dont have a clue really what Im looking for.

My intentions are to be able to make great video movies both inside and out as well as being able to take better than average digital still shots. Both inside and out.

Am I dreaming here or what?

Thanks for your help

Kind Regards

Panda

[roxydog]

Gidday Panda

The Canon S2 IS has the best video mode at the moment for a P&S camera.

Can use optical zoom to 12X plus digital to 48X -record in stereo -take full res pics while filming - image stabilization at all times,and operation is only one press away.

If any other P&S cam can do all that - i have'nt found it yet.

The only downside is it can only record 7-8mins per 1gig

Good Luck

Cheers Dom

[airshowfan]

Hey panda.

I dont have a clue really what Im looking for

Here's what you're looking for:



1) Movie resolution: Make sure it can record at 640x480 resolution. Many cameras can still only do 320x240, which is all right for recording funny events and brief moments, but is just not that clear.

2) Framerate: Any less than 20 frames per second and the video looks way choppy. Ideally, look for cameras that can do 30 fps.

3) Sound: Some cameras do not record sounds with digital movies! make sure the cameras you are considering do.

4)Zoom: Most cameras do not allow you to zoom in or out while shooting video. If that is important to you (and recomposing on-the-fly is always a great thing to have), make sure to look for this rare feature.

5)Codec: Most cameras record videos into AVI, MOV, or MPG files using the motion-jpeg (MPEG) codec. Some cameras, however, use the MPEG4 codec, which through only a slight loss in quality allows for the files to be half the size - so you can fit twice as much video into the memory card and it will only look a tad worse. This is really not that important unless you know you will want to record long events.

Recommendations: The Minolta Z3/Z5/Z6,the Panasonic FZ30,and the Canon S1-IS and S2-IS take great pictures, have lots of zoom, have good lenses, AND shoot great video - you can even use the zoom while filming. The Kodak V550 is tiny and also allows you to use the zoom, but it has less zoom and the video quality isn't that great.

If using the zoom while filmingisn't that important to you, then a TON of cameras can do 640x480, 30fps. They are listed... somewhere on these forums. Anyone have that link?

[sw2cam]

KODAK P850 and P880 shoot 640X480 at 30 frames per second. The 850also zooms 12X optical and digital while in the movie mode. Seems to me the P850 has IS and a hot shoe for a flash. Why do the 30fps at 640X480 that the V550 shoots look so bad?

[airshowfan]

I think I read somewhere that the Kodak's videos might be interpolated up to that resolution, rather than actually being recorded originally at that quality.

Actually, I take that back. I was thinking of another camera. The V550 has a great movie mode and takes good movies. Now I'll have to try and remember which camera it was that i read that about... Sorry.:sad:

Here's the link to the monstruous list of 640x480 30fps cameras:

http://www.stevesforums.com/forums/v...c.php?id=32698

[airshowfan]

It was the Nikon S4 that I read that about. The 640x480 might be interpolated up. Might be true of some Sony cameras too, the older ones.

[Caelum]

Panda, the ultra-compact Sanyo C6 appears to have the best movie recording quality vs. recording time ratio. Itdoes very good quality MPEG-4 video with good low light performance (it has an exclusive advanced 9-mixed pixels technology that utilizes the entire 6MP sensor when recording movies) and can record an hour of high quality in a 1GB SD. It has a 5x optical zoom and takes pretty good 6 MP stills as well.

[Panda]

Hi,

thanks for the help everyone.

You have given some great tips and camera's to study.

Have a lovely day

Regards

[kjeal]

I'm surprised noone's mentioned any Sony cameras. I've got a w1 where the 30fps is quite impressive. However, 22 minutes (superfine quality) on a 1gb stick is something that does mean lots of ££ on memory.

[big_potato]

Using Kodak v550 for 6 months, taken over 80GB or 40 hrs of video, I CANNOT notice that the video is interpolated nor dithered.

I take a lot of video of my son.

All his facial detaiils, iris of the eyes and fine hair ....etc would reveal whether the video is interpolated or not.

The sharpest DC video I've seen.

But I must mention that, the nature of all (not only kodak) MPEG-4 movies (object-oriented motion encoding), may be subject to less smooth video flow, when the background moves abrupty (you swing your DC rapidly while taking video). It relies on a relatively stable background, to compute and predict the motion of the subjects, and hence encode them.

Just my minor info.