[The Godfather]

Originally Posted by KeithM

Crash in New York was shot on a 1ccd $400 Walmart mini dv cam, so pretty much anything would be a step up. However, I think CINY looked fine. Particularly for a documentary, that street level feel ain't a bad thing. So I was looking at these new High Def cameras until I realized that was insane, since I have no way of pressing a High Def dvd and I can't afford it anyway.

Then I started looking at the XL and it's ilk. They are very tempting, particularly for the shotgun mic. Since a one man documentary crew has no room for a boom, most of the sound is gonna be camera sound, though I will rig up some fancy lapel mics for sit down interviews. However, again, the sound in CINY turned out surprisingly decent with just the camera mic, since everyone in a documentary tends to be close to you.

It would be nice to get a fancy pants broadcast quality camera. The camera Matt's holding in the Toronto pictures made me jealous. But even a used XL or similar is gonna cost at least $1000, and I don't think I can swing that before the podcast expo. Instead I might just head down to Best Buy and get whatever 3ccd handheld has just become obsolete, though even that's probably gonna cost $600. Maybe it would be better to go all out and get a better camera right now, instead of wasting money by improving in increments.

So in short, I'm not really sure yet.

I would donate. ..