Next step up Video Camera

[richardash1981]

I should have said that - I have got a set of (cheap plastic, but as you say, no optics) extension tubes for the 450D DSLR, which do a good job for close-up stills. They came from a Polish Ebay shop, because (rarely for Canon extension tubes) they have the electrics so the lens fully works when mounted on them - unlike 90% of what was available online at the time I bought them.

But the old 450D body I have can't shoot video at all - which is where this started!

[TomHoward]

Thanks for all the comments above, it makes a great read.

We also are camera hunting as we have (no surprise here) recently expanded into needing to do online streaming for lectures, chapel services etc around a large school site.

We have bought an ATEM Mini which is working great fed into Teams / Zoom etc and I am looking to find some cameras to match.

 

Currently I have access to 1x GoPro Hero 5 and a couple of £200 domestic Sony cameras which do do clean HDMI out but currently don't seem to output the sound over HDMI.

The sound is not a big issue, as we can route it separately on the ATEM.

 

Looking at the Canon range, as above there's consumer cameras for £100-200 and the higher end consumer cameras eg HF G25 for around £400-500.

Does anyone know if the G25 kind of range are a great improvement over the domestic, or am I better just sticking with the cheap ones?

I'm particularly thinking of things where they might be high contrast light, eg streaming a music concert with spotlights / LED colour and the lighting may not be as strong for video.

[GaryNattrass]

Ha ha I ended up buying the HPX371 myself as I already have an HPX301 so it will match.

 

Immaculate camera and bargain so looking at an ATEM Mini Pro ISO now to set up a multi camera small streaming set-up as I have most of the other kit needed already.

[richardash1981]

To being this thread to a conclusion for anyone else reading along - I bought a second-hand Canon HF200.It's done a few jobs now.

I'm generally pleased with it. The catch (which is specific to HF2x from Canon) is that it doesn't cope with fast memory cards. Because it was launched before Class 10 cards were a thing, it can't read the speed of such cards. As a result it treats them like a Class 1/2 card and refuses to record at more than HDV (1440x1080i50 @ 12Mbps) resolution. The card that came with mine was of course a Class 10 card! In theory there used to be a firmware upgrade to fix this, but it required a Canon service centre to install it. Canon service don't do this any more (I had to send them Sandisk's web page about it before their second line support would accept it had even existed!), authorised repairers might. I went sideways round the problem by buying a pair of old-stock Sandisk Class 4 32GB cards from https://www.picstop.co.uk/ to use in it. These record 1920x1080i50 @ 24Mbps just fine ...

 

I haven't used the HDMI output on it yet, but it definitely does clean output over composite (testing a scaler), and it handles like a proper video camera - variable speed zoom, autofocus that doesn't hunt periodically, and auto exposure that is good enough to leave on most of the time.The older cameras in this series have a microphone input jack (and manual level control in the menus), according to the specifications, this disappeared from more modern European models!

Outdoors and indoors in daytime the picture quality is fine - some noise is visible sometimes, but in general clean. I should note that the LCD display makes it looks a lot noisier than the recorded files are! I'll post some links once I have some things up (there is a service for Wednesday which was all shot on it).

 

 

 

[richardash1981]

Oh, dear, I'm back again.

First off, I promised some links, so

all on the HF200 in 1440x1080i50 mode (because of SD card issue referred to above).

is in full HD 1920x1080 after getting the faster cards, but only the music and the third reading are shot on on the HF200, the rest is smartphone/tablet footage.

 

But that isn't the reason I'm back. I subsequently went out and filmed bits of video of our Eastham Nativity trail of outdoor displays, which all went fine. But when I went to turn on the camera this afternoon (it having been in it's box since I walked home) I got a continual low whirring noise, and the camera didn't get beyond opening the lens shutter and switching the backlight on, leaving a blank LCD. The power LED was green, and the camera wouldn't switch off (I had to take the battery out in the end).

The internet suggests that the moving focus lens and/or the sensors the camera uses to determine where the lens is have become deranged (and the firmware lacks sane error handing for this condition).

http://www.tomorrows...ck-screen-issue

https://www.avsforum...-guide.1524624/

Anyone encountered this, have any suggestions or recommend a good Canon camera repairer?I've tried the reset button on the side of the camera, and some tentative tapping of the camera, to no avail.