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Do you really need an expensive camcorder to take good videos? they answer is no

here is an example of a video from my camera, a small compact Nikon Coolpix L26 shown below.

Cost on ebay under £50 as now out of production





And here is a short video I just took to prove my point using that this camera can do a decent job of taking videos



So this begs the question as why the video side that most cameras have now a not put up on here?

Bit pointless having cameras that can take videos and not use them

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Nice garden Realspeed. I have video on my Panasonic point & shoot camera but have never used it.

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That's not a garden, it's a country estate

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You should have seen our home and kennels then ,over
2 acres

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I have high definition video on my camera and never used it. I didn't buy it for video, I bought it to take pictures. I believe its video quality is exceptional, but I've never seen it myself.

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you should give it a try. It is completely different from still photography and in some ways more challenging.

You have the same problems plus smooth panning -wind noise- keeping level- change of focus- frame rate -to name a few.

I set up my rig to overcome a lot of these.

here it is with what I have




starting with
tripod = Primaphoto bit like the manfrotto befree but cheaper
Then = a thread converter nut and home made collars to
add width support

Next= a Velbon fluid head PH-358 so I can do manual panning, comes with a mini ball head ( not wanted by me)

Next= Hague 340 degree power head with tilt and manual speed control or auto panning

Next = Panasonic camcorder

Finally a sennheiser MKe400 mike on an extended raised studs with a godmann dead cat. that make of deadcat has the longest hairs of most others and a tight fit to the mike. Foam ones are useless for all but top professional gear


Ok why like this?

first of all I wanted to be able to quick change from manual panning to powered panning so it is smoother. In this picture has the camcorder but any camera could fit.

One thing I discovered is camera mikes are not that good and can pick up camera audible noise so to get the mike away from the camera body was to extend it away and with a short lens to stop dead cat hairs showing in frame.
I could also add my earphone onto all this as well.

So as you can see already there is a lot more to overcome with video shooting.

Ok you can just hold up a camera and video shoot but you get camera noise- breathing noise depending on camera sensitivity -jerky panning not level etc etc

The video of the garden was taken on this but with a compact camera on top. I also added a bit of music to it.

Yes once the video has been taken you might want to cut-splice add sound track- voice over- scroll title and loads more besides. this is what makes taking videos interesting