Lars Aronsson wrote:
I agree. This was my first reaction to the Wikimania presentations. But when you have an external microphone, perhaps more than one, you also get the problem that you might have connected the wrong one, or forgot to switch it on. How do you make sure the mike is on, before 3 minutes of the presentation have already been lost? Soundcheck, testing, testing.
Yep, sooner or later you make a habit of it.
This is easy to say, but doesn't play well with the massive collaboration of Wikipedia. We want hundreds of volunteers to take photos of flowers and buildings, and they can do this with very cheap digital cameras. For birds, folk dances and vehicles we should encourage video. But if it requires an investment of $3000, it will not become a mass movement. This is the equation we have to solve.
If the microphone jack is requirement #1, you could get tolerable video with something like
http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-camcorders/canon-fs200-silver/4505-6500_7-33...
which is more like $300. A tripod and good mike puts the bill up to about $500-600. You'll do a bit better with something like
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryi...
which is around $500-$800 depending on where you shop. However, you're going to be making serious compromises until you get around $1500 or so
http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-camcorders/panasonic-ag-dvx100b-mini/4505-65...
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Lectures aren't particularly demanding (usually they are in well lit rooms) but I've done a lot of music shoots, and I really appreciate my friend's Panasonic for that.
Although it's out of the range of most people's budgets, there's a lot of exciting stuff coming out in the professional range: if I wasn't focusing my efforts on getting lenses for my still camera, I'd be pining away for something in Panasonic's P2 line, which range from about $5k-$50k. The $5k cameras are pretty awesome, but in the $30k range you've got cameras that are abut as good as the camera that Lucas shot "Star Wars Episode One" on (that cost about 10 times as much)