BlameThePixel!

So I've recently caught the cinematography bug and would like to buy a digital camcorder. A budget of around £100 to £150.

I've goy my eye on this http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=DDV-S670&cat=CAM but I'm not too sure about the footage resolution quality. How good is a 640*480 res? How good would it look on a TV?

Battery life, footage quality and size of the actual camdorder are the most important things really...

check out
http://www.mustek.de/eng_/html/produkte/dv5500.htm

available for £105 at http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=5829184159&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3 &product_uid=64483

I've got one a few models down form this and it's great. 640x480 is only available at 10fps on this and the one you spotted, but the 320x240 res is still pretty good if you've seen all the videos i have hosted on ur site.

I'm just interested in how good the resolution and fps of a camcorder has to be for it to be decent on the TV. My budget is expendable to £230 if needsbe.

How good is 10 fps?

Not Great...I think 20 makes movement look smooth, but i cant be sure...

movies are shot at 24fps.

your tv (in america) is 29.9997fps, or elsewhere 50 - 60 fps.

in computer games, you want minimum 60 fps.
your monitor does anywhere from 60 to about 200 (refresh rate)

thats a decent refrence, i think

oh yes - tv resolution (standard 4:3 tv) is a bit less than 640x480, but higher than 320xwhatever.

hdtv is (iirc) at least 1600x1024.
also, dvds are somethign like 768x560 or something - depends on the dvd and animorphicness. dvds are less than 800x600 though, im pretty sure of that.

You lovely lovely man CB! This is all the information I could possibly ask for.

So 10fps is a nono... Anyone know of any digital camcorders that record at 640*480 with a fps of around 20?

Found a decent digital camcorder that does 640*480 at 30fps: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=30018&item=3880341887&rd=1

Looks good, especially with the memory, but postage is steep, and you will have to pay VAT before the post office give it to you

was my second pas completely ignored then? most mini DV cameras will do a nice 320x240 at 30fps, which is fine for most movies (see the ones hosted on gfxjunkie)

Your main selling points should be battery life, performance in poor light and memory capacity.

No it wasn't ignored, it's just I need something that looks decent on a TV screen.

And how much would the VAT be? Some percentage at the 17.5% mark, right?

(This isn't too much of a problem as I can try asking a relative in Russia to buy it and bring it with him sometime)

17.5% indeed.

So that's a grand total of £310! Hmmph, time to send an email...