Hey guys, I am a keen wakeboarder, skateboarder, and skimboarder and love doing all of these activities with my friends... until i got a knee reconstruction last week and cant do anything for a year :(

SO... ive decided to take up movie making and editing of my friends doing these sports and make a movie, however am extremely un educated in this department.

What type of camera should i look at buying, and what program?
I have seen guys at the skatepark with a "fish lens"... is this a good idea?
also, if you could give me a general price range that would be great (i am in australia so i will do my best to convert :p)

thanks guys!!!

Rather than any of us give you a price range, what is your budget? I would go for a mini DV camcorder and if you are going near water then you are looking at some kind of protective cover - I don't know anything about them but I'm sure others on here do. The reason why I suggest Mini DV is that it is much easier to edit in the long term compared to Mini DVD or HDD camcorders which can be a real pain in the ass as not all video editing software will allow you to work with the files. To start off you can use Windows Movie Maker and post videos on YouTube and the like, but if you want to make DVD's of your own then Adobe Premiere Elements 4 will allow you to capture video, edit video and make your own DVD's for later viewing.

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Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...

thanks for the imput.

i am looking at somthing around $500 AUstralian... so yeah.

call me a noob haha but isnt a miniDV old technology? - what are the posatives and negatives of a mini dv?

Yes, Mini DV may have been around for a number of years now, but out of all the choices available in your price range it still gives the best picture and sound quality. The camera's can be easily connected up to computers and they work much better with all the editing software that is available. Don't be fooled by what sales staff have told you in stores about Mini DVD or Hard Disk camcorders, they use highly compressed video files, so you are starting off with a much lower picture quality right from the word go. And you have to go crazy trying to convert from one format to anther to get any of the popular video editors to accept the files.

I suppose one of the downsides is you have a lot of tapes lying about, but after you see the picture quality and how easy it is to capture, edit and make dvd's you'll soon start to forget about the negative points. I am not familiar with the model names/numbers of camcorders in Australia as they tend to be named sllightly different to what is available in Europe. You can't go wrong with JVC, Canon or my own favourite Panasonic (look for a 3CCD model if you can find one), I would tend to stay away from Sony's as they have cropped up in posts on this forum for all the wrong reasons.

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Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...

Thanks a lot niko, i will get one of them

look forward to it!

simon.

sorry, just quickly...

what features do i need to have on my mini DV cam when i go shopping?
what zoom etc...

thanks

Resonably powerful optical zoom, that can depend on which manufacturer you go for, for example Panasonic put tiny optical zooms on their 3CCD cameras whereas other companies put larger zooms on theirs, but only give you 1CCD. So you have to trade off one against the other, bigger zoom (30 times) but only 1CCD or smaller zoom (10 - 12 times) and 3CCD's? Try and get a camcorder with an external mic socket, a large LCD screen (that you can rotate up and down) and with you being in Australia, one that is still easy to view in bright sunlight would be helpful.

Don't worry about digital zooms (they are a marketing ploy and ultimately useless) or how many megapixels your new camera has, if you want decent stills pictures then buy a digital camera instead. Some sort of manual control over exposure, focus and white balance would be great, so you don't have to rely on auto mode all the time in tricky lighting situations. Having said that, finding manual controls on camcorders in your price range now is becoming more rare. And of course DV out/iLink/Firewire/IEEE 1394 most important (they all mean the same thing by the way). Try and get as many of these features as you can.

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Better than a poke in the eye with a pointy stick any day...