Hi everyone,
I need to buy a film camera but am not sure which kind/brand/model/format would suit best my purpose, which is the following:
I use a pc laptop, have Vegas Pro 12 installed (will probably switch to Vegas Pro 15 soon), and after editing and rendering I upload my videos on Youtube. They are mostly music videos.
My n°1 priority is film quality.
I would like the original footage to be of an excellent quality so that after editing and rendering it could be modified if necessary, converted, transcoded, etc. – and still have a professional look once on Youtube.
I used to be very happy with my MiniDV Sony DCR-VX2000. My second camera was PowerShot SX1 IS and its specs were not so bad: nice viewfinder, 1080pixel frame size, 30fps, quicktime MOV format... unfortunately the zoom wasn't smooth enough and also I couldn't film in darkness. My current Sony HDR-PJ810 is a small thing with a viewfinder, 1080p, 25fps & 50fps and a great stabilizer; unfortunately I can't get accustomed to its tiny camcorder shape – and anyway I can't use it because the AVCHD format is far from being perfect for the kind of work I do. With a budget of about $1500 (or rather €1250, as I live in Europe) I hope I will be able to buy something better.
I have read a lot about film cameras and formats but have to confess many things are still not clear to me. So far I have understood that there are lossless and lossy/compressed formats. One can convert lossless to lossy (not the contrary). Am I right to think that what I need is a lossless format? Btw I have always considered avi as a lossless format, yet recently much to my surprise I read that avi was also a "container". I already knew about the existence of containers (e.g. mov is a container and so is mp4)… but my beloved avi, only a container? How come?
Which are the real lossless formats? Can all of them be used on Windows os? Are they only available for professionals? How to find out which format is hidden inside a container? And why must there be containers, what is their raison d'être? These are some of the questions to which I haven't been able to find simple clear answers.
They also say image sensors are very important when choosing a film camera… yet amazon, for instance, rarely/never gives details about sensors.
Will you please enlighten me so I feel less silly when reading reviews about film cameras, and if possible would you help me choose the ideal one for my work?
Thank you very much in advance for your time.