New Camera

My dad just bought himself the new 17" MBPro and is ready to start making videos for his business. Nothing too high tech, but def. wants high def. Prefer 1080p, if they make them. I am not sure what they cost these days. I would def. use it to shoot wake stuff. Anyone have suggestions? I would think a price range of $1,000-$1,500 would be reasonable.

Did your dad make sure to get the upgrade for the make cool videos button, business edition?

All joking aside, check out these two cams. Both are great and fit your Price

http://tinyurl.com/cc2zh9
http://tinyurl.com/nwp86s

Now if your dad wants to upgrade and spend a little more $ check this camera out

http://tinyurl.com/l8sdtn

I use a 15" MacBook Pro with a Canon HF10 and it is the bomb. I just use iMovie and it makes great 1080i (i think it is i and not p) vids.

I do the exact same thing as Rob. Super easy and quality is great.

what size SD cards are you guys using? Does video take a long time to transfer using a SD card reader? Is there a fire wire connection to use for transferring from the internal memory on the HF20? I am torn between the HV40 and the HF20. I can decide between the flash memory and the miniDV formats. Any thoughts?

Yeah, if I were looking in that price range I would probably get the Canon HFS-100 and a couple 32GB Cards with an extended battery. Here's a link to the cam. It's pretty slick. I own the HF-100 which is the previous version.

Here's a link to it. http://digg.com/u16WRg

(Message edited by iamnathanhudson on June 23, 2009)

I recently purchased an HF-S100 and a 32 gig SDHC card. I am pleased with the camera but my current system can't handle the AVCHD format, so I have to wait until the fall when I get my mbp to cut and edit...

And in case you wanna dabble toward the higher end of things I'd so go with the Sony EX1! It's a beast and will give you so much control over everything. The great thing about the EX1 and that 17" Laptop is that there is an expresscard slot and you can take the solid state memory out of the Camera and slide it right into the Macbook Pro and dump the footage super fast! If you want TRUE 1080p then definitely go with the EX1! Here is a link to that.
http://digg.com/u16WWi

I don't think there's a $1500 camcorder out there that shoots 1080P.

I think the flash memory camcorders are awesome. I can't comment on other formats- this is all I know. I sometimes record on a 4G or 8G (fast) SD Card designed for video but lately have just been using the internal 16G flash memory. It takes a while to send it to my Mac. The other day I had approx 58 minutes of video and it took over an hour to get to my Mac. After being imported, I see each individual video clip and simply cut and paste the portions I want into my project. It is very easy to add stills, music, voice over, etc... I don't really think a 32G SD card is needed. You can shoot a couple hours of HD video using 16G and I would suggest downloaded to a PC/Mac after each session. When we go wakeboarding I can get plenty of video using a 4G card.