Which digicam for good movies?

My sprog is looking for a replacement for the poxy Aiptek 1.3 Mpixel mini-dv
camera he's currently got, which he uses about equally for stills and moving
pictures. Obviously any digicam in the market will do decent-enough stills,
but he makes mini-movies with his friends so wants something that'll do
reasonable videos with sound.

Since we use a lot of AA NiMHs around the house we're looking for a camera
that runs on those, and for storage are slightly inclined to CF as my Nikon
CoolPix uses those too. We've been looking at the Canon A75 which does 640 x
480 res movies up to 3 minutes at a time (allegedly :-). (The A60 only does
320 x 240 so the A75 should give massively better res for moving pictures.)
The camera's about £140 from ebuyer and a 256M CF card about £20 (we'll have
to get some NiMHs somewhere too).

Anybody have any experience with this camera's movie mode? One thing I
haven't found is how many fps it runs at - obviously if it's a quarter of
what the A60 does it's not much good! Also is its sound quality OK?

Can anyone suggest any other cameras we might be looking at in the same
price range?

tia

Easy. Buy a camcorder. Buying a digital camera for its movie-ability is
backwards if you ask me. Get a camcorder.

LRH

Easy. Buy a camcorder. Buying a digital camera for its movie-ability is
backwards if you ask me. Get a camcorder.

LRH

[John Stumbles wrote in uk.rec.photo.misc]
Anybody have any experience with this camera's movie mode? One thing I
haven't found is how many fps it runs at - obviously if it's a quarter of
what the A60 does it's not much good! Also is its sound quality OK?

I've never seen any camera with a decent video mode - even videos caught
in decent photographic conditions look tiny, grainy, with terrible sound
and are often quite klunky.

About the only use for them is capturing what someone's saying or doing in
a pub once they've had a few drinks. I think that's known in the trade
as 'collecting blackmail material'.

The A60 is a really good stills camera, and would be a massive step up in
terms of stills quality - if it does videos that are better than the current
camera, then it's a bonus, but I'd focus on getting the best stills camera,
since that's what they cameras will do *best*.



--
Regards, Andy Davidson
http://fotoserve.com/ - posters, lab prints, slides from files - great prices.

[John Stumbles wrote in uk.rec.photo.misc]
Anybody have any experience with this camera's movie mode? One thing I
haven't found is how many fps it runs at - obviously if it's a quarter of
what the A60 does it's not much good! Also is its sound quality OK?

I've never seen any camera with a decent video mode - even videos caught
in decent photographic conditions look tiny, grainy, with terrible sound
and are often quite klunky.

About the only use for them is capturing what someone's saying or doing in
a pub once they've had a few drinks. I think that's known in the trade
as 'collecting blackmail material'.

The A60 is a really good stills camera, and would be a massive step up in
terms of stills quality - if it does videos that are better than the current
camera, then it's a bonus, but I'd focus on getting the best stills camera,
since that's what they cameras will do *best*.



--
Regards, Andy Davidson
http://fotoserve.com/ - posters, lab prints, slides from files - great prices.

The Canon S1 IS has a really good movie mode.

Larry R Harrison Jr wrote:
Easy. Buy a camcorder. Buying a digital camera for its movie-ability is
backwards if you ask me. Get a camcorder.

LRH

Andy Davidson wrote:

[John Stumbles wrote in uk.rec.photo.misc]

Anybody have any experience with this camera's movie mode? One thing I
haven't found is how many fps it runs at - obviously if it's a quarter of
what the A60 does it's not much good! Also is its sound quality OK?


I've never seen any camera with a decent video mode - even videos caught
in decent photographic conditions look tiny, grainy, with terrible sound
and are often quite klunky.

The Canon S1 IS is very good: 30 fps, 640x480 and good audio. Also has
IS and you cannot hear the zoom operate in the audio. Amazing.

Not a camcorder -- but good to capture the occasional movie clip.

It was demoed to me by George Lepp in one of his classes. Given his
apparently unlimited budget for DSLRs and lenses, that was pursuasive.

I love mine.

Phil

Andy Davidson wrote:

[John Stumbles wrote in uk.rec.photo.misc]

Anybody have any experience with this camera's movie mode? One thing I
haven't found is how many fps it runs at - obviously if it's a quarter of
what the A60 does it's not much good! Also is its sound quality OK?


I've never seen any camera with a decent video mode - even videos caught
in decent photographic conditions look tiny, grainy, with terrible sound
and are often quite klunky.

The Canon S1 IS is very good: 30 fps, 640x480 and good audio. Also has
IS and you cannot hear the zoom operate in the audio. Amazing.

Not a camcorder -- but good to capture the occasional movie clip.

It was demoed to me by George Lepp in one of his classes. Given his
apparently unlimited budget for DSLRs and lenses, that was pursuasive.

I love mine.

Phil

Larry R Harrison Jr wrote:
Easy. Buy a camcorder. Buying a digital camera for its movie-ability is
backwards if you ask me. Get a camcorder.

Yes but he wants good stills too. Are there any camcorders which do
decent stills? At our budget (which we're stretching to get the A75)?

Also my own camcorder is quite big and relatively fragile, and the
relative small size and ruggedness of digicams is attractive.

Larry R Harrison Jr wrote:
Easy. Buy a camcorder. Buying a digital camera for its movie-ability is
backwards if you ask me. Get a camcorder.

Yes but he wants good stills too. Are there any camcorders which do
decent stills? At our budget (which we're stretching to get the A75)?

Also my own camcorder is quite big and relatively fragile, and the
relative small size and ruggedness of digicams is attractive.