With another trip rapidly approaching, and this one absolutely guaranteed to have some craziness in it (we’re planning on off-roading a 2wd car…), we decided we’d better figure out some recording equipment better than just our iPhones, and something that we could easily record a lot of high quality footage with that would in turn encourage us to keep the camera rolling where otherwise the iPhone would have just gone into the pocket and missed out on a lot of things. This was spurred on by the fact that I recently upgraded the software on mine, and no-longer have a jailbreak installed. We have some serious issues transferring video off our iPhones on the toughbook without using iFunBox (some software that allows filesystem access), and so we’re now in the situation where we have no way of recording video during the trips.
We spent a lot of time going back and forth on which camcorder would be best, and even went and had a look at some in a local Currys, but really, until you put in an SD card and hit record, you have no idea how it will turn out based solely off that little LCD screen, and certainly for us with an investment so large we tend to do a lot of research first. So, this morning, the idea suddenly occurred to me to walk into Currys, buy one of their SD cards, and then walk across to the other side of the shop and try out a few different camcorders that we had contemplated.
There were many “Full HD” models, with lots of different price levels, so we grabbed some test footage from the following:
- JVC Everio GZ-HM301BEK @£179.99
- Panasonic HDC-SD41 @£199.99
- Canon Legria HF R205 @£229.99
- Panasonic HDC-SD90 @£429.99
As soon as I was home, I set about putting the footage together into a workable comparison video that we could throw up on YouTube, both to help others who are in the same position as us, and so that Azemute could take a look:
It immediately became clear which one is best (the Panasonic HDC-SD90), and in side-by-side comparison, the others look downright amateur in terms of quality, but then at almost double the price of the Canon, one does tend to expect a slightly better offering; the SD90 also has the added bonus of a hot-shoe for either spot-lamps or microphones, and a separate mic-in port which would allow us to use radio mics in the future. It’s truly a magnificent example of what a high-end consumer/low-end prosumer hybrid should be.
So now, we have to figure out exactly how we’re going to afford to pay for an SD90 and the upcoming trip, but hopefully it’ll be worth it in terms of the quality level of the videos we’re able to put out (yes, we’re fully aware of how bad the iPhone video is). The donate button is over on the right if you feel like helping us, and we’ll happily put you on the Sponsors page too ;-)!
