Suppose I had better start the subject off. If anyone has any questions then maybe I can point in the right direct to take. so please ask.
Photography has changed so much since I started many many years ago with a box brownie 127 kodak camera. From that now technology in photography must rate as one of the quickest and far reaching advances in recent times. It has gone that far that even making your own movies are not out of reach.
So on the subject of videoing getting away from still photography for a time, I have noticed people seem to shun away from taking videos and to be honest I don’t understand why.
I get the excuse " well I can take a photo print to show my friends/relatives. This is a complete load of rubbish to my mind, it is no harder than taking a memory card or portable hard drive and if necessary a laptop computer.
So one shows a holiday photo to whoever and what are they actually looking at? possibly people standing like statues not moving or a set area with nothing surrounding it. OK don’t get me wrong stills have their place for portraits buildings etc and a camera is ideal.
But back onto videos which can be more challenging as one has to deal with noise such as wind blowing across microphone causing a rumbling sound . Then more recently avoiding accidently filming children not only upsetting the parents but even being arrested. So not only choosing a camcorder but also a microphone recording correct sound , not the tinny squeek squeek. With a video one can record an event from start to finish . OK I hear you shout so can cameras, but forgetting the time limit or overheating because a camera doesn’t have a cooling fan
With videos editing becomes more into the subject and learning how to overflap text into a video as an example.
Phone cameras??? I notice most only have a small middle section o the screen when seen on a monitor? what good is that? not for me sorry.
Try taking this with a camera or mobile phone, well you couldn’t as others found out in the group I was with on last years holiday. Distance was one issue and another holding up a Camera for a long time. this is why several asked me about my Panasonic HC-X1500 pro camcorder and were going home to the USA and getting one for themselves.
they were about 500 ft away at least from where I was standing (hand held)
h.
To be fair RS I don’t think anyone has ever seen an edited video that you have made. The ones you show here and on Youtube are just snippets of videos with no titles and no story. It would be nice to see a video of a trip you have made from beginning to end with titles and soundtrack.
That to me is what videography is all about and how YouTube creators make a living (no, I am not suggesting that you make a living from YT) but with all the money you have invested in your hobby it would be nice to see an entertaining, edited, finished product rather than pictures of the equipment itself.
Fair comment Bruce, editing can take many forms though, from just removing unwanted sections to adding as you say sound etc. The problem I have is an internet connection barely adequate. to make anything other than a short video with if lucky an upload speed of 6 Mbps more often than not a lot less . So to even make a 15minute video including editions as you suggest would be a day or more to produce. High speed fibre optics is not even on the British Telecom local exchange upgrade for a few years yet, so I am stuck with BT contract that we have. I have to say it is so frustrating when I already have on my computer backups such videos in 4K. The internet is so slow most of the time it is not really feasible to even attempt to upload anything. On thing I detest is when say music is added to a video hiding or disguising the original sounds made at the time,. To me it points to too little attention is applied to the sound when making a video, subject to forgetting to switch on the microphone , as I have done on occasions
Why on earth do you put up with such slow speeds? Surely you are someone who wants to upload videos showcasing your thousands of pounds worth of equipment I can’t understand it.
You have three choices:
Pay to have fibre connected
Buy a USB modem and use the mobile phone network
Get a mobile phone and use it as a hotspot.
Options 2 or 3 are the obvious choice used by most pensioners here to get the internet. I used to use a dongle when I travelling before I had the Telstra network on my phone - I bought a stick tied to Telstra - from memory it was only $20 and I paid for a month’s data at a time as needed.
These days option 3 is clearly the best, you get fast internet and free phone calls and save on your internet and fixed line - think of the joy of telling BT to stick their line rental where the sun don’t shine.
Bruce maybe you didn’t understand we don’t have fibre in the street yet from any company. Also I don’t own a mobile phone they cost too much to buy and your paying $240 a year for yours
I am paying $200 (£100) a year for unlimited Overseas and Domestic calls and texts and 140Gb of Data but when I used the dongle I was paying $10 a month with Optus but needed Telstra cover when travelling just for one or two months. I am now with Telstra so no longer need the extra SIM for coverage when travelling. I hope that clears that up.
You don’t need to buy a mobile phone just get a dongle (Option 2) for a fraction of the cost of a mobile phone.
You probably don’t even need the unlimitied data but surely if you can spend god knows how many thousands of pounds on your camera and all its accessories then a £100 a year to be able to use it to its full potential is neither here nor there.
It is like owning a Ferrari and never taking out of the garage because the petrol costs $2 a litre
Here’s a picture of my dongle taken from 500ft away with my phone, You can see the SIM card toward the bottom of the picture and the place for a memory card toward the top. You could store your videos on it… Together with the default password and SSID for its use as a modem
I still maintain there is a reluctance to use a camcorder, They have, like all photographic equipment, come on a long way and now even come palm size. Not only that cost in some cases a lot less that a half decent camera and lens. Prices on that well know sight “AMZN” start from only £50 but what the quality is like is questionable.
Stand your movie camera, its handle and microphone next to your compact Panasonic camera and you will understand why. Your compact camera also takes movies (1080p?). If you had a mobile phone you could take a picture of them next to each other
so not that much bigger but far more options/settings on the camcorder such as slow motion and infinate run time without over heating as well as dual card slots which can run consecuteily or follow on, even one card continuous recording and the other just what one wants to video . let alone the built in ND fliters and accept extrnl microphone mounted on top
I don’t want to be picky but that doesn’t include the handle and the microphone which you bought for it but, as is, it is still twice the length and depth.
Even so you couldn’t fit the camcorder in your pocket and it answers your question of why people don’t use a camcorder
BTW just to further the discussion - in my opinion the Puffin video would be much improved by editing out the first two/three seconds of camera waving. Just saying.
purely experimental at the moment and doing another should be more refind. What I did was mount a compact camera on top of the camcorder then onto a tripod. The idea was to see which produced the better video. It is only a very short clip only acouple of seconds. Yes Bruce I can see what needs doing re speed heading etc etc.
top is compact camera
bottom camcorder
However even this took me ages to work out how to produce this double video with the editing suite I used and so many times the settings in the suite didn’t work must have tried 20 times in total before it decided to do what I was trying to do. too cold to stand outside for longer video and camera corrections and the like so they pair up the same
This editing suite I would class as a professional one and would take weeks to find ones way around it. Above is less than 1% of what it has, but it edits 4k videos as well
today I have had an Idea on making it more steady when walking with a camcorder. I have posted the idea in pictures on another forum but it is too much hassle to do it on here with a zero membership level
