Videography

One of my hobbies has always been videography.  I am not a professional.  Just an avid hobbiest spending too much on professional equipment.  For the boat, I am not able to use my Canon XH A1.  This has been a GREAT camera.  I love this camera!  Unfortunately it is just too big and bulky to be convienent on a boat.  In addition the underwater housing weighs a lot and costs a fortune!

I am looking forward to telling our stories via video.  There will be a lot of beautiful and interesting things to see and tell our friends and family.  Finding the right camera is very important to me.  As with everything, I did a lot of research to determine the best overall balance between functionality, portability and price.

They key criteria for the new camera is:

• Excellent HD video quality in variety of conditions
• Compact housing, but not cheaply made
• Excellent low light capabilities (underwater use in particular)
• Native 24p (24 frames/s progressive)
• No HDD or DVC, flash memory only (less moving parts, hate DVC)
• Easily attach external mic (sound is 50% of video, bad audio is worse than bad video)
• Lots of manual controls (focus, aperture, shutter, white balance, etc)
• Reasonably priced underwater housing (I will use my current housing if possible)

Cutting to the chase, there were really only two options - Panasonic HDC-TM900 or Canon Vixia HF G10.  I chose the Canon.  Partially because I loved my XH A1, but also because the new Canon is the best low light camera in this size available on the market.  In addition there is a good external mic (DM-100) that easily mounts on top of the camera withouth having extra wires.  Not as good as my Sennheiser boom, but still far better than any internal mic.

So in conclusion I have posted several videos I made during a diving trip to Bonaire.  This was shot with older equipment and not very good low light performance on the eagle rays, but still fun.  Enjoy!

Youtube stripped of my audio track for this one...going to fix shortly....