I am interested in buying a new digital camcorder, preferabbly MiniDV, and great film quality. For Independent Filming. I was wondering, should I get the Canon Gl2, CanonXL1S, or the Sony VX2000. I have been snooping around other sites, and been hearing recent rumors of the Canon GL3. should I hold off for that? Does anybody have any news of the Gl3 or any early specs? This would be of great help if you guys could tell me. Thanks.
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Digital Camcorder
- Thread starter Messedupmikey
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Happy new year everyone,
I wouldn't know which digital cc I'd buy at the moment, but....
1. I would make sure its on the Apple compatabilitielist. It then should work with FCE/FCP.
2. I'd watch out for the analog and digital input possibility, this lets you put edited vid's from your computer back on tape or extract somethings from your normal vcr using the analog in ports and put these snippets onto the computer.
3. Nice to have is also a shoe to stick external microphones onto it. The sound of mini and digital8 camcorders is not too good. On quiet moments you even get motor humm in the background due to the small form factor of these machines.
As to your Camcorders:
I've owned both Sony and Canon's and were pleased with both. At the moment I'm using my third Sony, a Trv modell and especially like the batterylife.
Hope this helps
ron
I wouldn't know which digital cc I'd buy at the moment, but....
1. I would make sure its on the Apple compatabilitielist. It then should work with FCE/FCP.
2. I'd watch out for the analog and digital input possibility, this lets you put edited vid's from your computer back on tape or extract somethings from your normal vcr using the analog in ports and put these snippets onto the computer.
3. Nice to have is also a shoe to stick external microphones onto it. The sound of mini and digital8 camcorders is not too good. On quiet moments you even get motor humm in the background due to the small form factor of these machines.
As to your Camcorders:
I've owned both Sony and Canon's and were pleased with both. At the moment I'm using my third Sony, a Trv modell and especially like the batterylife.
Hope this helps
ron
Re: Digital Camcorder
I haven't heard any news about a GL-3, of coruse I haven't been looking for any either.
I'm not sure what you mean by "great film quality." If you know what you are doing you can get the broadcast quality out of the XL and the VX (and probably the GL-2 in most circumstances).
What is you budget and what do you want to do w/the camera? The biggest advantage to the XL-1s is that you can mount different lenses on it. Of course if you do not plan/cannot afford to purchase/rent extra lenses for it than that "advantage" is a non-issue. Although I think they've fixed this problem on newer cameras, Canon's used to lose sync on a regular basis when footage is imported for editing. My experiences have come 2 flavors. Flavor 1: Everything is 3 frames off from begining to end. Flavor 2: Sync drifts on any capture over 20 or 30 minutes. Obviously this is not show stopping (considering the huge popularity of of the XL series) but it is annoying. FCP 3 and 4 are supposed to be able to compensate for this, but sometimes they can and sometimes they can't. If you want to shoot 16x9 or in "frame mode" then the Canon pulls off these "modes" better than the VX2000 does. If using these modes is not important to you, and you will not be buying extra lenses to use on the XL-1s then I see no reason not to get the VX-2000.
Now that I've typed all that realized that Sony has released the VX-2100 (an upgrade to the 2000). Better low light and better audio seem to be the major upgrades. The 2100 is only 2 or 3 hundred more than the GL-2 (the XL-1s is about a grand more than both of these cameras).
Lethal
I haven't heard any news about a GL-3, of coruse I haven't been looking for any either.
I'm not sure what you mean by "great film quality." If you know what you are doing you can get the broadcast quality out of the XL and the VX (and probably the GL-2 in most circumstances).
What is you budget and what do you want to do w/the camera? The biggest advantage to the XL-1s is that you can mount different lenses on it. Of course if you do not plan/cannot afford to purchase/rent extra lenses for it than that "advantage" is a non-issue. Although I think they've fixed this problem on newer cameras, Canon's used to lose sync on a regular basis when footage is imported for editing. My experiences have come 2 flavors. Flavor 1: Everything is 3 frames off from begining to end. Flavor 2: Sync drifts on any capture over 20 or 30 minutes. Obviously this is not show stopping (considering the huge popularity of of the XL series) but it is annoying. FCP 3 and 4 are supposed to be able to compensate for this, but sometimes they can and sometimes they can't. If you want to shoot 16x9 or in "frame mode" then the Canon pulls off these "modes" better than the VX2000 does. If using these modes is not important to you, and you will not be buying extra lenses to use on the XL-1s then I see no reason not to get the VX-2000.
Now that I've typed all that realized that Sony has released the VX-2100 (an upgrade to the 2000). Better low light and better audio seem to be the major upgrades. The 2100 is only 2 or 3 hundred more than the GL-2 (the XL-1s is about a grand more than both of these cameras).
Lethal