HV30 Perfect for me?
 

Hello everyone,

So a while back I was contemplating getting an HV20 to go with my new black macbook. I ended up returning the macbook for various reasons, and taking a break from any future video projects.

However now I'm ready to move forward and purchase a camera. I recently bought the previous model MBP new (the Penryn edition). I plan on using Imovie and perhaps FCE for my video projects. Those video projects are:

1. My acting reel (a series of scenes I plan on producing, shooting, and editing, featuring myself).

2. A series of cooking videos featuring family members, etc.

3. A short film I just finished writing.

I read this in another post:

"people are simply shooting in HD and down-sampling to SD Widescreen so that we can output to standard DVDs. There is some quality loss, but still far better quality than shooting in SD."

Do you agree with that statement? I'm thinking of gettng something that shoots in HD, but I won't be using blue ray discs, etc.I posted this question in a few other forums and several people suggested the HV30. Thoughts?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

I think when you consider quality and value, the HV30 is amongst the best cameras available right now. I have one and use it along with my XH A1 and it's very hard to see any quality difference between the two.

For a consumer camera, you get a descent amount of manual controls, even if it doesn't have a real manual focus ring. Image customization options are good for it's class and it's intuitive, at least to me. If you look at the HV20/30 channel on Vimeo, you'll see some pretty incredible pieces there.

I shoot everything in HD and down-sample to SD from the camera. In everything I've read the consensus is that down-sampled HD footage will generally look better than SD footage from the same camera. You also have the added benefit of going back and using the HD footage in the future, should you ever want to.

For the types of things you're looking to do, the HV30 will serve you well.

It is a very capable camera and makes wonderful images. However, the two things that I find very limiting about it are"

1) No "real" audio inputs. Yes, there is a mini-jack but it can be very restrictive to use just this jack when you want to start using better-quality mics that require XLR. Of course there are adapter boxes you can add but, by that point, youve spent enough money and made that camera look like a bigger prosumer camera. I won't buy another camera without XLR.

2) No lens control. Coming from still photography, I really miss being able to fine tune focus and aperature (iris on video cameras). It didn't stop me from buying the HV 20 but I miss it.

All in all it's a great first camera or first HD camera.