Buying a point-and-shoot for video
I was in a Price Club store in Virginia over the weekend, and they had a large display of very good digital cameras, including some of the models that are excellent for shooting on-the-spot video.
What I look for in a digital point-and-shoot camera:
- Street price about $300 or lower (look at the Canon PowerShot A570 IS)
- Still-image quality of 5 megapixels or more
- Optical zoom of 4x or more
- Image stabilization (why this matters)
- VGA-quality video (640 x 480) at 30 fps (frames per second); see an example, including clear audio
- Optical viewfinder (although the excellent Lumix DMC-TZ1 lacks this feature, which makes your job easier in bright sunlight; the Lumix counters with a 10x optical zoom)
- Batteries you can buy off the shelf, such as AAA’s (my own beloved Canon PowerShot SD700 IS lacks this feature, having a rechargeable lithium-ion battery)
- USB 2.0 connection (no need to remove the memory card from the camera — just connect the camera directly to your computer and transfer all the photos)
If you’ve got one of these in your pocket (and they do fit nicely into a pocket), you can try shooting video informally when you’re out reporting a story and then experiment with the video when you’re not on deadline.
Technorati tags: video | journalism | journalists | online journalism | online media | future
It’s a good checklist, but why not go the other way and buy a camcorder that can also shoot stills?
May 21, 2007 at 3:53 pmI’ll tell you that I’ve found it much easier to find a camera that shoots video well than a camcorder that shoots stills
And on the whole, cheaper too.
June 9, 2007 at 12:52 amThanks, Zippy. I also find that the decent video cameras are so significantly larger (even the consumer models) — I rarely want to carry them with me. My point-and-shoot LIVES in my purse. I am never without it!
June 10, 2007 at 1:39 pm[…] covered point-and-shoots in an earlier blog post here. Reporters can start shooting video with these, and in many cases, the quality will be BETTER […]
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July 11, 2007 at 4:29 am