| I have a Canon 7d that takes beautiful video. I spent a fair amount of time learning to make beautiful videos with it, and I also spent a fair amount of money buying low light lenses, filters (vari nd filter), and still need to buy audio (zoom h4n), steadycam (zacuto) and follow focus gear. The thing is, I intend to make a documentary so I do want it to be as good as I can possibly make it so I will end up spending an additional $1k-2k on top of the camera body depending on the gear I end up going with. Having said that, the target market for a cheap Canon DSLR (parents) with the stock lens and nothing more than a tripod should be very happy with the flexibility of carrying one camera for stills and video, and the results they get on video should be very close to a a similarly priced camcorder. Here is an example of why. I was at a ballet recital on Saturday and a father was filming his daughter with a $900 Canon T2i camera on a tripod and his video will likely look better than on a comparable Canon camcorder because the light was not changing, his subject was at the same focal distance and his camera was mounted on a tripod. That eliminates almost all of the manual control variables that require more equipment except for one - audio. A $99 audio device can fix that if it matters to you. On the flip side, the DSLR gives you full manual controls and the ability to shoot in low light with possibly a cheap $100 Canon 50mm f/1.8. Here are two videos shot with DSLR's that can show you the range of these DSLR's: Alexandra (1 camera body, lens, and monopod)
http://vimeo.com/6854556 Salton Sea (1 camera body, lots of lenses and fancy equipment)
http://vimeo.com/10314280 Video DSLR's will replace camcorders eventually. In the meantime they can be useful in that they take both stills and video, and etter yet they are the best thing that happened to independent film makers. UPDATE: Another comments points to a post on Philip Bloom's site about which DSLR to purchase. Philips site is full of very helpful information, the Salton Sea video linked to above is his. http://philipbloom.net/2010/06/06/whichdslr/ |