There is something special about video that you can’t get from writing or photographs. Seeing someone on video is more personal. I really want to see more links to videos on the Etsy site, so I’m starting up this tutorial series to get you started making your own videos. Making videos gives the world a chance to see the personality and process behind the things you make.
Let’s start with some super cheap cameras. If you’re wanting to make video on a budget, you have a few options. The simplest option is to use what you’ve got. You may already have a video camera. Did you know that most digital photography cameras have a movie mode that takes great video? If you’ve got one of these, you’re done looking, start shooting! A lot of time you can even set these to 640×480 resolution which is good enough to make great web videos. If you’re buying something, the cheapest option is to use a flip camera. These are pretty inexpensive and they are easy to use. The resolution isn’t fantastic, but they are small and light and easy to carry around and shoot things with.
If you’re looking to step it up, the next level of video camera is a DV camera.You can find these for around 200-300 dollars. When you’re looking for a camera, check to make sure that it’s got a microphone jack and a headphone jack so that you can hook up an external mic and listen to the level of the sound as it’s recording. Make sure your computer has a firewire port before getting one of these or you won’t be able to transfer the video over.
If you’re feeling fancy, you can get an HD camera. You can get a camera like the Sony HC1 which records HD video to DV tape (little mini digital video cassette tapes). But my recommendation is that you skip recording to tape. I’m in favor of using cameras that record straight to an SD Card, which is similar to the little card your digital still camera uses. If you’ve got somewhere between $600 and $1000 to spend, I’d recommend, the Sanyo Xacti HD2 which is a great little 720P camera or the Canon Vixia HF10. I’ve also played around with this Panasonic HSC1UP camera which is a bit more expensive, but has 3 chips in it which means the colors are a little snazzier. All of these record to SD cards. If you are going to be using iMovie (the video editing software that comes free with Macs), you’ll want to get the Sanyo Xacti which records to an easily convertable MP4 format. The Panasonic and Canon SD cams both record to AVCHD which is a wonderful format allowing a lot of hi-res info to fit on a card, but it’s not compatible with iMovie 7 at this time.
If you’ve got a serious budget and you’re thinking about shooting broadcast HD, you can get the Panasonic HVX200. We shoot our Handmade Video Portraits on this. This is a professional level camera and it’s awesome.There’s a bit of a learning curve to dealing with P2 cards though, so be prepared to spend a day or two reading the manual.A great place to go and learn more about cameras is creativecow.net. The forums there are really helpful and the community is great.
No matter what camera you get, I recommend getting an extra battery and separate battery charger.There is nothing worse than running out of batteries when you are shooting something special.
If a wide-angle lens is available for your camera, get it! I love wide-angle shots to be able to show lots of a room in your frame. Again, the best thing to get started with is what you’ve got.
In the forums I asked for camera recommendations and got this message.
My next video is about tips for shooting video. If you’ve got an idea you can leave a comment, or leave a note in the forums or leave a message at 917-720-4197 and maybe I’ll post it with the next video.
Hi Bre,
Wonderful video. I love how you showed the output of the Flip in the video AND how you placed the wide angle lens on the camera that was shooting!
Yay.
–Steve
Ok, well here’s what I wanna know: when looking for a camera.. I wanna be doing chroma keying… I asked about this on a snarky video forum and it the feed back was like.. you need to spend $2K on lights, and you need to go pretty high up the prosumer camera latter.. and probably a lot on the actual green screen.. but I assume one could cut corners?
Oh, and great video by the way!
Nothing can stop you from trying to do chroma keying with whatever you’ve got!
Give it a shot!
For me, I can always tell green screen stuff, so it really doesn’t matter if it’s done well or not.
iMovie 7 does accept AVCHD.
I use it with my Panasonic SD5.
Other than that, great post.
I love you site and I want to start a site similer to your where I make a project ever week. I was wondering if I could do a remix for some of your videos just to get started? Also I was wondering if you had any tips for a fairly new vBlogger. I have watched almost all your videos as well as Kipkays and a few other I have found that most good videos run about 4 minutes and follow this form
1. Intro.
2. What your going to make.
3. Supplies.
4. Fast speed video of the process and short tips clips.
5. Why to make what you just made.
6. Credits and copyright.
* Does that look right?
* How fast do you make your fast speed video?
* Do you know of a good free PC video editing software?
* What video editing software do you use?
* Do you just shoot one long clip and cut it into the pieces you need or do you take a lot of small clips?
* Do you have any tips for me?
* I downloaded you Midis and loved them and cant wait to use them in my new videos, but I will use them all very quick so I was wondering how you made them and how I would go about making them. That sounds like a great video idea.
* How do I afford web hosting I have done some research and your host looks like the best out there and I will be sure to use you as my contact if I sign up, but Im just a teen I have NO money to pay for it how did you start?
Thanks for your help,
–
Ethan Steckmann
hey…I am about to upgrade my editing software to finalcut express from imovie… because I have managed to consistently overwork it. what editing software do you use? and what format do you save your movies in for upload?
for shootin’ tips.. I am mostly curious about recommended camera distance, angles and lighting.
Thanks so much.
[...] Online VideosTo start making YouTube videos etc. you need to make sure you have the right camera.http://www.brepettis.com/blog/2008/05/05/getting-started-in-video-camera-choices/TeacherTube - Teach the World Teacher Videos Lesson Plan …Our goal at TeacherTube.com is to [...]
I got really excited by the getting-started in video post and got a small SD video camera the Panasonic SDR-S150. It was an impulse buy spurred on buy a bad day at work…
My first big problem I encountered was getting MPEG2 video (produced by the camera) into Final Cut or any of the standard Mac video applications. (I thought there was a quicktime mpeg2 plugin but alas I never recall getting it to work)
However, a quick Google and I found a pretty good conversion tool that is free, yes free… called MPEG Streamclip video converter for Mac OS X by Squared 5 http://www.squared5.com/svideo/mpeg-streamclip-mac.html
I just converted a bunch of my first test clips to quicktime and it seems perfectly adequate. It claims to work with iMovie as well and I see no reason the file shouldn’t.
[...] You’ve got a video camera…what next? [...]
ditto to what steve said. Great series you have going here.
Not much to add here, outside of my thanks to Bre (why did you leave capitol hill??? Oh, NYC, but still…)
I’ve been amazed what I can do with my flip cam (1st gen, 30 min). My early Nikon Coolpix also takes audioless vid which can be fun. I only wish the flipcam had a tripod mount.
[...] Camera Choices [...]