Buying the right digital camera can be a tough job and if you want to use your digicam to shoot videos you need to take extra care to check the camera’s video capabilities. Some experts argue that you should not consider the video capabilities of a digicam as its quality is nowhere close to that of a camcorder; but that’s like saying do not buy a point & shoot camera for shooting pictures because its quality can’t match that of a DSLR!
So what features or specifications do you need to check before you buy a digital camera with good video capabilities?
1. Widescreen Aspect Ratio:
Even though computer screens & LCD TVs have shifted from the conventional 4:3 aspect ratio to the new 16:9 aspect ratio, most cameras still shoot videos in 4:3 VGA format(640 x 480). These videos will not look good on your widescreen laptops or TV. So ensure that your camera can record videos in 16:9 aspect ratio.
2. Resolution & Frames per second – Support for HD videos
For a widescreen aspect ratio, a resolution of 848 x 480 at 30 fps is minimum. Newer cameras can shoot videos in 720p HD resolution at 30 fps which is essential if you plan to see your videos on your HDTV. If you prefer conventional 4:3 videos, then look out for a resolution of 640 x 480 at 30 fps.
3. Video compression
Most cameras use the older uncompressed Motion JPEG codec for encoding your videos. While such videos have better quality, they utilise large amount of space on your memory card which limits you from recording lots of videos. Motion JPEG does have its advantages such that it is easier to edit videos and you can extract a still image from your video easily.
But newer cameras use the MPEG4 family of codecs to compress videos to fit in more movies on your memory card. And the loss of quality is not visible to a human eye; think of it as using a MP3 audio file instead of the CD quality WAV format.
To further illustrate, a camera using Motion JPEG codec can record upto 8 minutes of 720p video on a 2GB memory card. Whereas a camera using MPEG4 codec can record upto 41 minutes of standard 720p videos on a 2GB memory card.
4. Opticial Zoom during recording
Most of the cameras in the market today lack the ability to adjust optical zoom once you start shooting a video. You can only adjust the zoom before you start shooting. You may need to spend more if you need support for optical zoom during recording.
5. Limitations on recording time
Check whether the camera has any limitations restricting recording videos to a fixed time limit, say for example 10 minutes. Your camera should allow recording videos for unlimited time, only limited by the size of your memory card, or limited to a large video size of say 2GB.
6.Video container format for output
While some cameras record videos in the ubiquitous AVI or MPEG formats, some cameras also record them in Quicktime’s MOV format. Do check whether the video container format suits your liking with regards to support in your favourite media player and video editor.
Recommended Cameras for videos:
Amongst the major digital camera brands, Panasonic has been the pioneer in implementing widescreen videos in its digital cameras since a long time. Most of the Panasonic cameras support widescreen recording in addition to conventional VGA recording. The Panasonic TZ7 (also known as ZS3 in America) supports HD videos in highly compressed AVCHD format at 60 fps and also supports optical zoom while recording videos.
From the Sony stable, cameras such as W270, W290 & WX1 models support 720p videos in compressed MPEG4 format.
Canon has been surprisingly late to the HD videos party and even though their latest models support H.264 compression, they produce videos with file size as large as those created by Motion JPEG, thereby defeating the purpose of using compression.
We highly recommend the Panasonic TZ7 (ZS3) if you intend to use your digital camera for recording videos with the Sony DSC-WX1 behind at a close second.
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