whats a good camcorder for fireworks

[martymower]

Any thoughts on a 200 dollar or so camcorder for consumer fireworks filming?
I have zero experience so I need simple.

[PGH_Pyro]

youd have to spend more than that to get really good H.D. results

[PyroManiacs]

Sony PMW-EX3.

THE BEST!

[PGH_Pyro]

4K with a good lens if you can afford it ! :) (then you're into $5-10,000 )

[cduesman]

If you're looking for "good" and ~$200. You can watch for the Canon VIXIA HF R400 HD Flash Memory Camcorder to go on sale.
I picked one bundled with a "SanDisk Ultra 32GB Secure Digital High Capacity SDHC UHSI Class 10 Memory Card" for $184 before the Holidays as Best Buy. It appears to be closer to $300 now, but if your patient I suspect you'll find it closer to $200. It's usually a better deal to buy one that uses Flash memory cards (rather than built in memory) as Flash memory cards prices tend to be coming down and go on sale.

It has a fireworks mode, that looks pretty good. It like the other Canon fireworks modes are a little on the dark side.

I have an older Canon HF200. It costs a bit more back when I got it. The wind blew it over and damaged it. It still works mostly, but has some issues transferring the data back to the computer sometimes.
I bought the newer cheaper R400 to replace/backup the HF200. I have some video where I pan between the 2 cameras and they appear fairly comparable.

I think the R400 might pick up more wind noise than the HF200. A lot of the cheaper cameras pick up wind noise easily as they don't have the foam mics. (You can use external mics if you wanted to correct this.) It appears the R400 does have audio controls to manaul adjust the mic volume levels, but I haven't played with that yet.

The other thing to watch on the cheapest models is the battery. I believe there's a few cheap models that have a fixed size battery rather than the battery sticking out the back where it can be various sizes (capacities). Some of the cheap models battery life is somewhat limited as well so you might want to price the battery upgrades.

Both cameras have the ability to split your video up into smaller pieces or delete sections on the camera. This saves a lot of time vs editing and re-encoding HD video on the PC. The also both hae a "pre-3s" mode which is cool if you're shooting a demo and want each item a separate video. Basically this means that when you press the record button, it will take the previous 3 seconds and adds it the video. So if you press the button when an affect fires, you'll get the 3 seconds before it fired included in the video.

In this video, there are 2 unmanned cameras, the low/ground shot is the older Canon HF200 and the high shot is the Canon R400. The HF200 is close (with a wide angle lens) and the R400 was pretty far away. It appears the R400 is NOT threaded to accept a wide angle lens (so that is a bit of a bummer, I just noticed that.). If a wide angle lens is important, this might not be the model for you.

I may have had the R400 in the 2nd highest quality mode rather than the highest quality, but I don't really see any difference between it and the HF200.

(Well techicially there are 3 cameras in this video as I had one station that stopped firing and I mixed in a few shots of it when I fired it after the main show. Since the cams were on tri-pods and didn't move, I was able to mix a few shots to get some of the missing shots in.)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJlooUfIKWQ

Chris

[PyroManiacs]

My biggest issue with camcorders is the sound. I MUST have good sound. :)

[N3OQO]

Another thing to consider in the overall picture is video editing software. There are some very good ones out there for 40-50 bucks that will enhance sound and video.

[PyroManiacs]

This can also be used for digital external audio recording, I have a friend that does professional sound and video editing and this is what he uses on the go.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001QWBM62/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_09phtb14DDT7Q

http://www.samsontech.com/images/productImages/h4n_page/h4n-callouts-front.jpg

[martymower]

Thanks for the tips. I will start watching for some of these to go on sale.

[Pyro Nation]

I purchased a few months ago the Sony HDR PJ790V.... I should of waited and for a few hundred more got the Sony 4K camera...oh well maybe later this year

[PGH_Pyro]

there are microphones that you can buy that really pull in the low-frequencies/booms in very accurately ... the brand 'Rode' comes to mind. There are others . Some of the really good-sounding pyro. videos you see on youtube coming from Europe are videos made with video rigs using those kind of mics. I'd definetly make the investment if possible .

[smilli]

Sony CX series, any model will do the job.
Lenses are better for fireworks than the lenses Canon uses and the lowlight quality is much better than any other brand.
For the audio i would just recommend the internal mic unless u have extra money laying around, In this case the RØDE Stereo mic's are the way to go.
Here is a video of mine shot with a CX and RØDE stereo mic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SVSOuZQ-7I

[PyroManiacs]

Awesome perspective!! I need to see more videos like that!!

[smilli]

Awesome perspective!! I need to see more videos like that!!

Thanks, have a look at my channel u will see lots of footage shot like this.
https://www.youtube.com/user/hardcoreCCCP