What's a good camera to start with?

[mizugori]

I am trying to do an a film with some action sequences, and have no clue what a good camera to start with is. Does anyone have some suggestions? Ideally price needs to be less then $2,000 (I am assuming I will be buying something used) and I will need to be able to do some digital editing.

What do you suggest? Thanks!

 

[Digital Root Films]

A tool is a tool. If the technology is there, why not? Of course, it isn't exactly there yet, but give it 5, 10 years, and I think it'll be perfectly reasonable to shoot a movie (video only) on a cell phone.

Yeah but when the technology is good enough for THAT, think about the big screen. How many more pixels should I mulitply it by to equal an iphones "movie" quality?

 

[TI Irwin]

Personally I really like the adobe products, like premiere and after effects.

I second that. Strongly.

 

[SLHerridge]

I will be buying my first camcorder within the next year as I aim to do some higher quality, independent film making. I have been working with a £200 JVC with terrible/minimal manual control, but despite that it has let me focus on my film editing skills.

I'm look at around £3000 for my new baby beast, after a discussion with a semi-pro film maker, he had seriously suggested to me the a Canon EOS 5D MARK ii... a camera for a camcorder?

It seems to have a lot of benefits for a first semi-pro camera, like amazing shallow depth of field, interchangeable lenses, the fact that it's compact, has many additional add-ons...(also because I have a secondary interest in photography).

My knowledge of specs is still in serious training... what am i not taking into account? Is this such a bad idea?

 

[Wombat]

I will be buying my first camcorder within the next year as I aim to do some higher quality, independent film making. I have been working with a £200 JVC with terrible/minimal manual control, but despite that it has let me focus on my film editing skills.

I'm look at around £3000 for my new baby beast, after a discussion with a semi-pro film maker, he had seriously suggested to me the a Canon EOS 5D MARK ii... a camera for a camcorder?

It seems to have a lot of benefits for a first semi-pro camera, like amazing shallow depth of field, interchangeable lenses, the fact that it's compact, has many additional add-ons...(also because I have a secondary interest in photography).

My knowledge of specs is still in serious training... what am i not taking into account? Is this such a bad idea?

It's fine. To be honest, though, the new hotness is actually a camera from last year; the Panasonic GH1. Someone recently developed a way to hack the firmware to turn the camera into a beast.