HD for everyone?

Phoenix - 2/10/11

There has been a lot of headway made in the consumer camera arena over the last couple of years. In fact every month or two a client asks, should I get one of these HD cameras for $1500? The answer is yes, if you want to make great home movies - not professional productions. The problem with these cameras is that they are based on  a variant of MPEG technology, either MP2 or MP4. They make great cameras to get high quality video cheaply. The problem is when you take that footage into a professional edit suite you’ll leave the editor frustrated. The issue is that MPEG based video must be rendered to the timeline before the first edit is made. If you have a lot of footage to go through this can take hours and add significantly to your edit price. There are a couple of other problems with these cameras also. The clarity quickly breaks down under fast action on screen. The other problem is that if your camera ‘drops’ a frame you loose 1/2 a second of footage rather than 1/24 or 1/30. Even with all those problems aside, they still have 1/3" or smaller imaging chips which will give them the 'everything in focus, this was made on a home video camera' look. They are great cameras for birthdays and christmass but you don’t want to trust your infomercial or commercial with a camera that may cause headaches down the road.