Andy Walker and Sean Carruthers talk ... all about new camcorder features using cheese and crackers. And, well, the usual mayhem ensues as you would expect with anything that includes cheese. Includes coverage of image stabilization (how it works and which type is better), tape vs. solid state memory cards and CCD (are 3 chips really better than 1?). We even tell you what CCD means. And Danish Havarti is featured.
Digital camcorders offer great picture quality, excellent sound, compactness and lots of features. Combine one with a computer for digital editing and output to DVD, and you could end up the talk of the next Sundance Film Festival. Although these cameras don't have many (if any) parts you can repair yourself, it's still possible to troubleshoot some common problems yourself.
There are times when your light sources will have different color temperatures. The most common situation is when you shoot a subject indoors lit by an incandescent light bulb with sunlight filtering in from an outside window. The reflected light from the bulb is reddish while the sunlight is bluish. The mix of color temperatures can give an interesting look to a shot if that is what you want. Your camcorder will most likely deal with the mix by adjusting the balance somewhere in the middle. Daylight will look a bit bluish and indoor light a bit reddish. By changing the white balance, you can make indoor light look white and daylight look very blue, or you can go the other way and make daylight look white and indoor light very red.
How can such a small device do so much? Particularly for anyone born before the 1980s, it's simply amazing that quality video cameras are now readily available as consumer items, and that they're so easy to use. In this article, we'll look inside these extremely popular devices to find out what exactly is going on. We'll explore traditional analog camcorders and also look at the technology used in digital camcorders.
There's a commercial on television these days in which a guy videotapes his wedding, copies it to DVD, and mails the disc to his parents. Perhaps as a sign of the times, mom and dad aren't surprised to get an optical disc filled with digital video from their son. They're surprised that the guy got married. That's because making your own video is a lot easier than it used to be. Producing video from your camcorder used to mean using a VCR or a second camera to copy your best scenes to another tape, then to yet another tape to get your film into the right sequence. Not only was it hard work, but every copy of a copy degraded the video resolution. In the end, it would look only a bit better than a quick-mart security tape. Compare that to how video is done today . . .
