Low Budget Camera Buying Guide

A Guide to Buying a Camera for the Amature Filmmaker

Buying a camera to get started in filmmaking is tricky.  Each year the cameras change and if you spend the time to do the research, it will only be relavant for 6 months or so. To make things easy for you, we at Untamed Science have done some research to help you understand what things you need to look for in a camera.

Manual functions: This may seem like an odd item to put in, but you want a camera that will allow you to focus manually at the very least.  You might also want to find a camera that will allow you to set the iris manually, as many shooting situations call for the light levels to stay fixed.

HD: Today almost all cameras will shoot in HD.  Don't buy a camera that only shoots in standard 720x480 - its a thing of the past.

Recording Medium: In the past, the medium of choice was tape.  Many cameras still record this way, but you should realize the problems with tape.  Many times the tapes will have problems with the recording heads.  This is more often than not the first thing to go.  If you can buy a camera choose first a solid state medium, like flash cards, SD cards or CF cards.  Hard drive cameras are also a good option, but have many more moving parts.  If you plan on recording in a tropical forest, humidity can cause big problems with tape cameras and hard drives.

Audio jacks: You want to at least have a port for a small mini plug that will allow you to bring in audio from an external microphone.  Most cameras over 300 dollars will have this option.

Recording mode: Have you seen cameras report being able to film in... 60i or 30p?  Basically, "i" means interlaced and "p" means progressive.  Without getting into a lot of detail, you want progressive, because it records one full snapshot 30 times a second instead of interlaced which records alternating "half" fields sixty times a second.  

Untamed Science Pick: 

The pick for us is the Canon HF11 AVCHD.  It was a favorite pick for its image quality, recording medium, size and recording modes (24p and 30p).  Its a very cool camera.

If you'd like to read more about other options, visit this site we found that ranked the cameras of 2008 and early 2009: