This is a newbie-what-camera kind of thread, so apologies if it's been covered loads of times.
I've been thinking along the lines of trying to get hold of something like one of the DV favourites, eg an XL-1 or AG-DVX100, though these are really a bit out of my my price range. But I've been reading 'Digital Moviemaking' by Scott Billups (published back in 2000, so things have probably moved on a fair bit). He comments on the high quality of Betacam SP, noting that: "An innovative person could conceivably put together a good used Betacam SP system that would drastically out-perform many of the prosumer quality DV-cam systems for a similar budget", and I'm wondering if that's still true. For instance, there's an auction just ended on Ebay for three Betacam SP recorder/players including a Sony PVW-2800, which I think originally carried a price tag around $25K. The whole lot was offered for £100, and there was only one bid.
I appreciate that technology moves on and gets cheaper - but there's surely some serious build-quality in these older systems. There are Betacam SP cameras on Ebay that have also plummeted in price, and I'm thinking the lenses on some of these old, expensive professional models may be better than the current "prosumer" crop...? I don't know where these fit into the 24-fps-film-look debate though.
Apart from the inconvenience of having to run your tapes through a video capture card, are there any major caveats here...? And speaking of video capture, is the process likely to hammer the quality without an expensive capture system...? I presume the transfer could be done digitally, but I don't know what equipment would be needed. Or should I leave this stuff alone and save up for a decent DV alternative?
I've been thinking along the lines of trying to get hold of something like one of the DV favourites, eg an XL-1 or AG-DVX100, though these are really a bit out of my my price range. But I've been reading 'Digital Moviemaking' by Scott Billups (published back in 2000, so things have probably moved on a fair bit). He comments on the high quality of Betacam SP, noting that: "An innovative person could conceivably put together a good used Betacam SP system that would drastically out-perform many of the prosumer quality DV-cam systems for a similar budget", and I'm wondering if that's still true. For instance, there's an auction just ended on Ebay for three Betacam SP recorder/players including a Sony PVW-2800, which I think originally carried a price tag around $25K. The whole lot was offered for £100, and there was only one bid.
I appreciate that technology moves on and gets cheaper - but there's surely some serious build-quality in these older systems. There are Betacam SP cameras on Ebay that have also plummeted in price, and I'm thinking the lenses on some of these old, expensive professional models may be better than the current "prosumer" crop...? I don't know where these fit into the 24-fps-film-look debate though.
Apart from the inconvenience of having to run your tapes through a video capture card, are there any major caveats here...? And speaking of video capture, is the process likely to hammer the quality without an expensive capture system...? I presume the transfer could be done digitally, but I don't know what equipment would be needed. Or should I leave this stuff alone and save up for a decent DV alternative?
