What video camera

[nottswarwick]

OK, so I am sure there is a wealth of "information" on the web on this, but by bass buddies will no doubt be able to distill their collective experience into something meaningful.

I am after a small, portable, reliable, easy to use video camera. I will use it to record songs at gigs, so it needs to be good in low light, and able to pick up decent sound without any external mics.

I will also use it in my teaching studio to do youtube clips etc.

I used to use a Fuji Digital Cam - a finepix 5600 or something, one of those "almost SLR" jobbies, and the mic and picture gave very good results - certainly good enough for the internet, where the end results will end up.

However, I sold it, and got a Nikon D90 SLR, which I am not happy lending out to our roadie to film us on - he would be careful, but it is too valuable in case anything happens.

So, ladies and gents of bassdom, fire away.

[nottswarwick]

No one?

[davehux]

I use a Sony Handicam - a HDR-CX115 - which is probably obsolete by now. Has a Carl Zeiss lens, records onto an SD card in HD and has Dolby stereo sound. Will record for about 2 hours on a charge, if you can't have it running on the mains adapter. Mine has a 64Gb card in it, which will record around 900 minutes of video.

The only drawback is that red stage lights knock the autofocus to pot.

Some clips here - obviously they've been compressed to hell to get onto YouTube. The originals are superb.

https://www.youtube.com/user/JumpTheGunCornwall

One other thing to point out is that it (and many others) record in AVCHD format, and if you use a Mac to edit, this format is not supported by iMovie. I had to buy iSkySoft Video Editor to read the files in without converting them first