Which Camera ?

[TIOAOA]

I'm looking to get a decent digital camera that could replace the age old Sony Video cameras we have in our media suite for green screen videoing and good quality stills.

 

I'd like something that we could run off mains power as well as battery for filming of Christmas shows and the like.

 

Can anyone recommend me firstly a good all-round setup Camera / tripod / accessories and secondly a good supplier.

[dhicks]

I'm looking to get a decent digital camera that could replace the age old Sony Video cameras we have in our media suite for green screen videoing and good quality stills.

 

I've had a Panasonic FZ150 for a couple of years now. It's an excellent all-round camera. It's a bridge camera rather than a DSLR, so it looks like a DSLR but has a fixed lense. That lense is pretty good, and has a good zoom range (25mm - 600mm, I think) which you'd have to lay a lot more for a DSLR with the same standard lense. Most schools I've seen that have a DSLR or two just use the standard kit lense the whole time, so a fixed lense is fine. All-round performance is good, both for stills and video. The only problem with buying a "stills" camera in the UK is that they will be artificially limited to half an hour's recording time. That's not a technical limitation any more, that's simply an export restriction. I considered buying my new camera from the US instead to avoid this problem.

 

My FZ150 cost me around £350, which was very good value for money considering how good a camera it is, I think this year's model is the FZ200.