Saturday, July 28, 2007

Video Cameras (Again)

I requested information a few days ago, and my readers responded! Thanks to all! It appears that the cost difference between buying a video capture card for my Hi-8 video camera, and buying a low-end digital camcorder is only about $100. I'm shocked at how inexpensive the low-end digital camcorders have gone!

One of my applications is time lapse photography--and there's two ways to do it: capture at normal video speed, and then use various programs in the computer to grab every nth frame (which is an oversimplification when you are talking about most computer video formats), or find a camera that is capable of recording at something other than 30 frames per second.

Some cameras, primarily intended for security applications, will record one second every 30 seconds. That's not what I need. Ideally, I would like a digital camcorder where you can set the frame rate, somewhere in the range from 15 to 5 frames per second, providing a speedup of 2x to 6x normal. This also has the advantage that you can fit a lot more video on the camcorder's memory device.

Any suggestions? Even if it is a pretty expensive, professional grade camera, if there is a place that I can rent one, that might be acceptable.

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