{"id":3384,"date":"2005-06-03T13:11:00","date_gmt":"2005-06-03T17:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wastinaway.net\/shortfatguy\/?p=3384"},"modified":"2021-06-06T13:16:51","modified_gmt":"2021-06-06T17:16:51","slug":"the-itch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wastinaway.net\/shortfatguy\/2005\/06\/03\/the-itch\/","title":{"rendered":"The Itch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n    I’ve got the itch: that all too familiar feeling where I’ve got newfound money burning a hole in my pocket. All except for the money part, that is. After many months I’m finally poised to start a big video editing project, and it’s got me thinking how much nicer and sharper the end result would be if I’d shot all the footage with digital video. Thus, I now find myself with the itch to upgrade from Hi8 to MiniDV. One major stumbling block — sidestepping the issue of budgeting such a purchase — is that there are so many companies and cameras from which to choose, with no clear-cut winner on top.
    Normally I would be focusing on a Sony product, but my initial research had me considering the Canon ZR300<\/a>. It bugs me that the Sonys all seem restricted to 10x optical zoom lenses, but here was one with a 22x optical zoom! Plus it reportedly had great color, “true widescreen”, and a good price. My mind was almost made up, until I found the lukewarm review at C|Net<\/a>. A lot of their complaints meant little to me though: I don’t care if a camera is bottom-loading since I won’t be using a tripod; still photo performance doesn’t bother since I already have a digital camera; I don’t care if it doesn’t have a lot of bundled software since I already have Final Cut Express and iMovie; the lack of a microphone jack is meaningless since I don’t shoot EFP standups and have never used a separate mic. One thing which was hard to discount though is the reportedly poor low-light performance. Since most of the footage I’ve been shooting over the years is relatives blowing out their birthday candles, low-light performance would be important. Equally unfortunate, poor low-light performance seems pretty common with all makes and models of camcorder.
    I actually went out to Best Buy last night, just to check out the ZR300. Instead, I was instantly attracted to the very sharp picture of the Panasonic GS250<\/a>. It’s sharper since it’s a 3 CCD camcorder, which also means it was a few hundred dollars more. I liked the adjustable viewfinder and I liked the feel of the camera, especially the little joystick control on the back — I could toggle through the menus easily with my thumb, rather than needing both hands to operate as with the Sony touchscreens. Unfortunately, it had poor low-light performance too, perhaps even worse than the ZR300 despite being almost twice the price.
    Further research on the GS250 soon led me to the Sony DCR-HC90<\/a>. The user reviews<\/a> I read seemed to suggest this might be the best camera to get for low-light performance. It was more than the ZR300 but equivalent to the GS250 — despite not having 3 CCDs.
    But before I could make plans to go back to Best Buy, or go price-shopping online, I read that Sony is coming out with a high-def consumer camera this Summer<\/a>. It almost feels that if I’m going to upgrade I should really<\/i> upgrade, even though I presently have no HDTV with which to view any HD footage I would be shooting. The stumbling block here would be that the Sony’s HDR-HC1 will list at around two thousand dollars! Then again, by the time I finally make up my mind that price will probably have dropped considerably. I can’t exactly say this news brings me back to square one, considering I don’t think I ever left there.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I’ve got the itch: that all too familiar feeling where I’ve got newfound money burning a hole in my pocket. All except for the money part, that is. After many months I’m finally poised to start a big … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gadgets","category-tech"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wastinaway.net\/shortfatguy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wastinaway.net\/shortfatguy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wastinaway.net\/shortfatguy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wastinaway.net\/shortfatguy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wastinaway.net\/shortfatguy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wastinaway.net\/shortfatguy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3385,"href":"https:\/\/wastinaway.net\/shortfatguy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3384\/revisions\/3385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wastinaway.net\/shortfatguy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wastinaway.net\/shortfatguy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wastinaway.net\/shortfatguy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}