I’ve been getting the question “What video camera do you use?” So often I decided I’d better just write a post about it. Well I’ve already written a forum post on the Internet Business Mastery Academy site, so I’ll just repost the good parts here.

I use the Canon HV70 for Distinctions For Life. Not sure you can even buy it anymore, which is too bad because it is a great little HD camera.

When you say you are going to do marketing videos what do you mean? If the content is good, or just interesting, the camera doesn’t matter. If you want to look professional, then here are a few things you really need to get in a camera.

1. An audio in jack. You need to use a real microphone, and you can’t if there is no audio in.
2. An audio out jack. You need to monitor that audio to make sure it sounds right. If I get my wireless mic too far from the receiver it gets all staticy. But I wouldn’t know that if someone wasn’t listening on head phones.
3. HD. Probably could argue this isn’t really needed, but is does put you at another level. Plus I like the wide screen aspect ratio and doing SD in that ratio, loses too much quality.

Lastly I’d recommend getting a camera that uses tape for a number of reasons. The biggest is backup. Once you shoot video you will import it into a computer where it will take up gigabytes of storage. If you use a hard drive based camera then your only copy of your original video is on the computer. Now you have to back it up. The only practical way to do that is to use another hard drive. If you have a tape, just keep it around. Your editing system can reimport the original footage at any time, and all you have to back up is the project file.

Second reason for tape is visual quality. HDV, the most common HD format at the consumer level, compresses the video to make it fit on tape, hard drive or SD card. But it compresses more depending on the storage medium. In the order I listed them. So stuff going to an SD card is very compressed. This means a lower quality of video. People have a tendency to think of compression only in terms of pixels, but the bigger issues are color range and audio quality, which degrade the more compressed a video source has to get.