[shuttertalk]

I was just musing about video on digital cameras vs camcorders. The newer cameras out have 640x480 @ 30fps, which is TV if not DVD quality, if I'm not mistaken.

So why wouldn't one ditch camcorders for digital cameras and have the best of both worlds?

Reasons I can think of:
- Image stabilisation - camcorders have image stabilisation to avoid jerky movies (I wonder whether digicams do this)
- Optical zoom - most camcorders have 10x optical zoom or more as standard
- No zooming while recording - most digicams can't zoom while recording
- Sound quality - perhaps camcorders have got better sound quality?
- All those special effects, wipes and stuff (although they can be added in later)
- Manufacturers that have both product lines don't want to shoot themselves in the foot


Any other reasons people can think of?

I think it would be great if digital cameras could have movie modes that would do away with camcorders. Still photography would still be my primary mode of operation -- but sometimes you may want to capture a birthday party or concert and not have another piece of gear to worry about. Your thoughts?

[Toad]

My A2 has image stabilization and you can zoom while filming (manual zoom ring).

The quality is acceptable - I never use it though. My son made a couple of films with it and edited them on the PC - the film quality was OK.

I think if you do a lot of video filming, a dedicated camcorder still has the edge on quality - and definately in storage space.

[shuttertalk]

Thanks for the tip.

Regarding storage space -- the digital camcorders these days use MPEG4 recording format and sd cards for storage - no more minidv tapes. On high quality, I believe a 1G card lasts about an hour. So that would be somewhat equivalent?

[Toad]

Regarding storage space -- the digital camcorders these days use MPEG4 recording format and sd cards for storage - no more minidv tapes. On high quality, I believe a 1G card lasts about an hour. So that would be somewhat equivalent?

I stand corrected. Don't use video much so clearly haven't kept up...