Electronics, huh? You’d think I have a one-track mind. You’d be pretty close to right.
So, we’ll be in China for almost three weeks. The point being that we’ll have a cultural experience of China that we’ll share with our child. God willing, we’ll be able to return as a family when our child is old enough to think that we’re lame parents.
We’ll be tourists as well as new parents. Both tourists and new parents need a video camera, right? I’ve been thinking about investing in a nice digital camera that also does a good job of doing video. Add a big SD card, and we’re all set.
Has anyone out there done this kind of thing? I just figure that with the level of technology in high-end digital cameras these days, what’s the point in having a video camera, and a separate still camera? All digitals take video of course. The fewer gadgets we’re hauling around, the better.
The question is whether to get a video camera, or to just upgrade to nicer digital still camera that takes great video as well. Thoughts, gadgets geeks?
As someone who recently completed an international adoption, I say go for a separate video camera. Before travelling, we had a DSLR and a point and more compact point and shoot camera, both of which do video. However, there are things that a dedicated video camera can offer that aren’t available in a point and shoot, and the primary benefit is image stabilization. Both as a feature and just in the way you hold a video camera vs. a regular camera, the videos will tend to be less jerky, especially following an active toddler around. Also, I believe that most cameras that do video can have battery life issues when using video as opposed to stills.
Another important aspect to consider is convenience. When you want to capture a photo or video of an unpredictable toddler, it helps to *not* to have to fool with settings to switch between still and video when trying to capture a particular moment, and instead you just have to grab the appropriate camera.
We of course did not bring our DSLR (too heavy/big for flight weight considerations, too breakable), so we had our point and shoot and video camera, and that worked out great.
Love our Flip; use it all the time. I hear they stopped making it. But it is still awesome, and still being sold. It’s so small, it’s easy to edit videos on your computer, and it has good video quality.
We have a separate video camera. Panasonic, I believe. It is small and works really well. Not inexpensive but I am really glad we have it. As with most gadgets I’m sure I don’t know half of what it does. 🙂
I’d highly suggest a flip, they are super easy to use… they have them with HD capability, relatively inexpensive. Easy to edit video… also great to stick in a purse or diaper bag, barely takes up any space! Only issue may be storage, but since I used one they may have increased that potential.
Not sure how high end you want to go, but you can always do a Flip if you don’t want to spend more than ~$200, and if you’re worried about storage space (though SD cards come in huge quantities of space) you can always pop a new sd card in there when one is full. If you’ll have your laptop, and I bet you will at least for such a long plane ride, you can immediately upload footage and wipe the sd card, where if it’s a traditional video camera I bet that would be harder. Ok.. so they probably don’t use physical tapes any more. Ha ha!