Thinking of picking up the Canon - VIXIA HF R52 32GB HD for $350 at Best Buy for the wife today for Christmas. Curious if anyone has one or has any recommendations on a decent camcorder in that price range? TIA and Merry Christmas!
Camcorder recommendations
- Thread starter Kel
- Start date
Who needs one when you have one on your phone? :shrug:
Subscribed.
Having a one year old at home now the wife and I were thinking of picking one up, the phones just aren't enough anymore for what we want to record.
Having a one year old at home now the wife and I were thinking of picking one up, the phones just aren't enough anymore for what we want to record.
I grabbed a go-pro Hero 3 silver for the wife. She can use it to shoot video of the little one and I can use it on the car. I however grabbed it when it was on sale at target for 200.
This really depends on what you're wanting to do with your productions. It's very true that the best camera or camcorder is the one you have with you. However if you're wanting to create quality images and movie productions, there's an old adage. "Crap in, Crap out." Phone cameras while coming a long way in recent years are still well behind the capabilities of even entry level consumer level products.
The problem is the packaging size. You can't get a quality sensor in a phone and they also like to play pixel gimmicks to achieve large format recording. At the end of the day a camcorder is going to provide a better picture, in a better light and color space than a phone. That may change at some point, but it hasn't yet.
OP the camera you're looking at was a good pro-sumer level camera about 4 years ago. It would now be what's considered an entry level camera. It has the ability to shoot true 1080p or 1080i at 60 frames (30 frames interlaced). In good lighting it produces a pretty rich image that in post production you don't have to do much with. It's picture IMHO is a bit oversaturated, but a lot of people like colors to pop, so it works in most instances.
That camera's biggest fall back is it's low-light handling. Like many consumer level cameras, the sensor being used to create crisp detail and a quality image in quality light isn't sensitive enough to capture artifact free motion in low light. Instead it uses a lot of input gain (like ISO) and the resulted output in low light isn't favorable.
It's not a bad camcorder for most people. If your wife is serious about doing some movies (probably family I'm guessing) you may want to up your budget a bit if you're going to shoot in dimly lit areas.
From a quality standpoint, I've always had good luck with Sony.
I agree. I have a Handycam and for the money, it works great.
I knew that wasn't going to sound right.
EDIT: The wife is picking this up tomorrow night after work http://www.bestbuy.com/site/sony-hd...lack/3317012.p?id=1219090214675&skuId=3317012
Last edited:
Here are the things that a phone sucks at.
Bandwidth.
Actual resolution.
Image stabilization.
Signal to noise ratio before the analog to digital conversion. (Hissy, shitty sound)
Miserable optics in terms of resolution, iris choice (none), ability to use filters, quality of coating(s) on optics.
And I am pretty sure I forgot the other ten or twenty other reasons.
I have had a Vixia for about 4 years and love it. Use Adobe Illustrator to edit them. Most of the car videos in my sig were taken with that camera. If you look at the video on the dyno at Kurgans the front shots are with the Vixia and the rear video is from an iPhone. Yes I know iPhone is not the best video but gives you an idea of video and sound differences between a Phone video and Camcorder video taken same place same time.
Last edited:
Users who are viewing this thread
