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Best DV Cameras for Documentaries?

post #1 of 7
12/2/02 at 4:59pm
Thread Starter 
Alrightly...I am looking for which DV cameras are best for documentaries.

The best quality, best price, best durability, best life, eveything.

I know alot about Canon's line of DV camera and how well regarded they are but do the Chewers have experience ith other cameras? Cameras capable of handling multiple types of shooting day and night?

Look forward to anyone's feedback.
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post #2 of 7
12/2/02 at 5:39pm
A good number of DPs who shoot digital are sticklers for Sony VX-1000 or VX-2000 cameras.

Beyond Canon and Sony, very few professional DPs who aren't using the 24P camera use any other brands.
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post #3 of 7
12/2/02 at 6:23pm
I wish I could find it, but somewhere out there is a list of what major DV films have been shot with, and almost every time it's a Sony. But I've done side-by-side comparisons between them, and the difference is negligible. If you're shooting a doc at night, which assumes you're not setting up any lights, a 3-chip is a better bet, which all of the higher end cameras are.

I personally use a TRV-900, which is the cheaper version of the VX-1000. I think the only difference is you can't switch out the lenses. But with a zoom lens, you really have a bunch of lenses in one anyway. And if you want a wide-angle shot, you can buy attachments that work fine. And it was a grand cheaper.
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post #4 of 7
12/3/02 at 4:23pm
If you are planning to transfer to film or broadcast on TV, a camera with 3 CCD is essential.

Most semi-proffessional 3CCD models cost around $3000-4000, I think, and produce near-broadcast quality images.
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post #5 of 7
12/3/02 at 4:50pm
Yeah, the high end cams are 3-4 grand, but the one I have, in which it's the same as the larger ones except for the unremoveable lens, can be had for under two thousand, and if you're willing to buy over the Internet (which I wasn't), maybe even closer to one.

Spike Lee used my camera, the TRV-900 to shoot some of Bamboozled, along with the VX-1000. You can't tell when the switchoffs occur. As I understand it, he used the VX-1000 for the main footage, but for scenes where he wanted ten cameras rolling at once, he used a lot of TRV-900s to fill in.

An interesting note...if you've seen the Celebration, that was shot with a regular, single-chip camera. It actually looks pretty good for the daytime stuff, but the underlit scenes look horrible, which I'm sure didn't help that it was transferred to 35mm.
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post #6 of 7
12/3/02 at 5:03pm
Here's a list of theatrical movies that were shot on digital. You can see what they used to shoot with.

<a href="http://www.nextwavefilms.com/ulbp/bullfront.html" target="_blank">http://www.nextwavefilms.com/ulbp/bullfront.html</a>
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post #7 of 7
12/3/02 at 7:12pm
Thread Starter 
Righteous!

Many thanks all and most of all to you Piranha.

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