New Camera??? - $1k model or Prosumer

[martycg]

Looking for camera advice, I haven't looked too closely at cameras for years, so, a little out of shape in that area.

Used to own a Sony PD150 which I loved now our church is looking at buying a camera for the typical IMAG, nursery, and video shoots.

We're looking for cameras in the $1k range, so, I'm going to need to do some convincing if need be on buying a $2000-2500 range prosumer camera.

Things I'd like...
- manual iris control
- prefer. XLR audio ins (obviously tough to find on a camcorder, exc. audio desired with mic input)
- firewire
- HD or HDV

I'm not up to date on the tape vs hard drive wars... tape is more money and bulkier, but I thought saving to hard drive or card 1.) the quality was recorded at a more compressed rate, 2.) doesn't it still take awhile to copy files from card to computer, PLUS 3.) I recall avchd issues when importing into editing programs.

Like I said, I need a refresher in this... but any camera advice/models would be appreciated. Thanks.

[JordanN]

For tactile manual controls and XLR audio, you will have to go with a Prosumer camera.

I very much like recording directly to SD card. It takes very little time to transfer my footage from my Kingston Class-4 32GB SD card (used in Canon Vixia HF-11) to my computer.

From a practical standpoint, it still takes time to convert all of the footage to proxies in Adobe CS4. Though now that I have a better processor, I might skip that step on my next project.

AVCHD is OK, but I confess I don't have any real experience to compare it to other formats.

[ramshackle]

Sony PD150s are still obtainable on ebay. I used to use one when I worked at the BBC. They're still a great camera if you want to go down the tape route. Call me old fashioned but flash/hard drive HD cams are a little bit too new and the compression needed on even a prosumer model is far too much for an old tape man like myself. But then what do you expect from a guy who still drives a 1993 Volkswagen? God Bless.

[stevelam]

The Sony HVR-HD1000U is a decent camera but it's a bit more than what you want to spend. I think this will fit the bill for you quite nicely.
http://www.kingdom.com/Sony-HVR-HD10...p/camsvr1u.htm