

Ask HN: Reasonably priced video cameras for startups? - prosa

I am in the process of creating promotional material for my product's landing page.  I'm a strong believer that people trust companies with names and faces, and I want to create a video of me giving the elevator pitch on my product.<p>Does anyone have a recommendation for a reasonably priced video camera?  Something that will get the job done reasonably well without breaking the bank.  (Or, can I get away with using my MacBook iSight?)
======
brk
Do you want to film the video with the camera and then import into your Mac
for post-processing (recommended). Or, do you want to hook a usb/firware
camera to your Mac and record directly from that?

For doing the sort of thing you're talking about, I recommend an external
camera. The recording media (flash, hard-drive, tape, etc.) doesn't really
matter because you're not going to be doing hours of continuous filming. You
DO (IMO) want a camera with an external mic adapter. This is important because
you'll likely want a wired or wireless lavalier mic in order to get good clear
audio.

Check your local craigslist. Lots of people are upgrading to newer HD cameras
and selling older units. You don't need HD for what you're talking about. Just
google "[camera model] + OS X" and you'll find reviews for most popular
cameras of how well it does (or doesn't) work with OS X and iMovie or Final
Cut.

I've had good luck with Canon cameras (but there are some models out there
that don't work very well) overall.

~~~
prosa
Thanks, this info is really helpful! (Especially the microphone, I hadn't
thought about that.)

I'd err on the side of quality as long as it didn't mean breaking the bank,
which probably means I'd go the import route.

In your experience, has iMovie been enough to get the job done on the software
side?

~~~
Hoff
Spend money on the microphone, or borrow a good one, and get a mike stand and
a pop shield. Particularly if you are doing any audio work, whether recording
or podcasting, or otherwise. A decent low-end cardioid condenser produces
audio output far superior to a cheaper mike, and vastly better than the audio
you'll get from an integrated mike.

And yes, iMovie and GarageBand and the rest of the tool-chain can be used to
produce reasonable content, once you get the hang of the tools, and can also
be combined with the application screen recording that is available within the
QuickTime tool in Snow Leopard Mac OS X 10.6.

Another area with the Apple iLife tool-chain involves how you can generate
graphics (diagrams, moving plots, etc) for insertion into technical
presentations. While static pages and screen captures and screen video are all
easy, I haven't found an entirely satisfactory way to generate more advanced
graphics for inclusion.

------
bjclark
The new iPhones and iPod Nano's are actually pretty good. So is a Flip. The
flips can even do HD.

------
DanielBMarkham
I love my FlipCam. I've been keeping a video diary of my startup on it, and I
also used several to record my vacation to Australia and New Zealand in
October.

I don't think you need super-high quality, even though the FlipCams are HD.
Content counts more than style or featureset. What I like about the FlipCam is
ease of use, portability, and connectivity to various video-sharing services.

The vacation was a bit of a testbed. Everybody in the family had a FlipCam,
and we posted to the net a lot. After a few days, however, we realized that
some sort of post-production really helped make the video much better. So I
started using Camtasia Studio for basic titling, popups, splices, and
transitions. It also allowed me to tweak the codec settings when I rendered
the file, which was nice.

Another interesting lesson: the more you film, the better you get. At first
everybody was stiff as a board the second you turned the cam on. Must be some
kind of hangover from the still camera days. But after a dozen or so shots
with us all watching the results, we realized that relaxing was the only way
to go. The videos got a lot better at the end.

Here's a sample of the more relaxed video we got at the end of the trip
instead of the start: <http://www.vimeo.com/7121046>

EDIT: I'm a bit of a movie buff, so this is a pet topic for me. I know that
you're receiving conflicting advice, and I really can't emphasize enough how
content trumps style. We found the the emotional context of a piece --
setting, reactions, flow, body language, vocal inflections, narrative -- win
out so solidly over technical attributes that you can shoot a great video on
the crappiest equipment imaginable and it will still be great video.

I could point to major motion pictures going the handy-cam way, like
Cloverfield, or I could point to the popularity of amateur internet video, or
even America's Funniest Home Videos.

But I won't.

