Video camera for research purposes

[German_John]

Hey everyone, 

 

I need a recommendation for a handheld video camera for research into the movement of insect antennae. These are the things that the device should do:

 

At least FHD resolution, more would be good 

Support 64bit recording (to avoid having multiple files) 

Optical zoom 30x or more would be good 

Tracking focus would be nice, depth of field about half an inch (the insects are in a petri dish) 

At least 50fps 

Good colour reproduction 

 

It shouldn't cost more than €2000.

 

I hope someone can help me! 

 

Thanks in advance, 

John 

[LaFemmeEnVert]

On 9/19/2018 at 11:10 AM, German_John said:

Hey everyone, 

 

I need a recommendation for a handheld video camera for research into the movement of insect antennae. These are the things that the device should do:

 

At least FHD resolution, more would be good 

Support 64bit recording (to avoid having multiple files) 

Optical zoom 30x or more would be good 

Tracking focus would be nice, depth of field about half an inch (the insects are in a petri dish) 

At least 50fps 

Good colour reproduction 

 

It shouldn't cost more than €2000.

 

I hope someone can help me! 

 

Thanks in advance, 

John 

for your 2000 euro budget you can purchase very nice camcorder that will offer FHD 50-60fps or more, use exfat or similar file system so the video clips do not become chunks of 4gb each and for longer optical zoom you buy camera with smaller sensor.  for tracking focus and dof, if insects are all placed flat on a petri dish you zoom in or out until the petri dish covers most of the image frame and set focus to cover the entire field of the dish.  cameras likely dont come with the sort of focus tracking you need to track insects.

maybe camera like this
https://cvp.com/product/sony_fdr-ax53_4k_handycam/department/video
https://cvp.com/product/canon_1959c010aa_hf_r88/department/video
 

[whoisjaya]

What about the Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ82? It's got a 60x zoom, can focus as close as 1cm and can do 1080p at 60 fps as well as 4K at 30 fps and 100 fps at 720p and 200 fps at a lower resolution. The depth of field is going to be everything but shallow, I guess.  Its "regular" autofocus works quite well, although I have to say I never really tried the tracking one, although it's probably not that bad either... One thing to add is that it "can't" really do any low-light stuff(I've seen worse low-light performance, but I feel like the footage kind of starts "falling apart" quickly)...  

Also, it doesn't break up the clips from my experience...  

 

I hope I could help(I'm really not sure if that's the kind of camera that suits your needs)...  

[German_John]

Hey, sorry for being so late! You guys were a great help.

 

In the end, we decided on a Sony alpha A6000. It does video very well, but with an added bonus: you can exchange lenses. That may come in useful for future research projects - in the past, for example, horses were filmed, and for that you'd obviously use a regular or telephoto lens, and for insects a macro lens. 

 

Many thanks, again!