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The bigger the element, the more light that can reach the sensor at any given moment, making for better image quality, particularly in low light. Any astronomer will tell you that one of the most important specs on a good refracting telescope is the size of its front lens element, which they often refer to as the light collecting area. Compare that to even the smallest of the lenses mounted on the camcorders on our list, and inevitable feelings on inadequacy begin to arise. Go ahead and take a look at the lens on your cell phone camera. Let’s start by examining one of the more obvious external size differences: the lens. And while the trend since the days of those behemoth video cameras has been to make everything about our technology smaller, the fact that these cameras outsize your cell phone is the very thing that makes them superior. Today, that fidelity of 4K, there’s an enormous amount of difference between capturing a 4K video on your smartphone and recording at the same resolution on a 4K camcorder. At the time, this was cutting-edge stuff, and the people who owned the devices were at the forefront of a very real desire to capture our memories in the highest possible fidelity.
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These video cameras shot on full-sized VHS tapes, which necessitated large housings, bulky motors, and more. In the early days of personal video recording, one might have seen a few tech-savvy parents at the school talent show equipped with camcorders that were absolute monstrosities. And farther down the list, our old nod to the off-brand camcorder market, the RainbowDay CC534K, was sent packing specifically for durability reasons, and was replaced with the somewhat more robust Zohulu Ultra HD, which comes with a nice little package for vloggers to stabilize the body and pick up decent audio. It also outputs 4K at 4:2:2 and 10-bit color, where the Z190 only hits those benchmarks in 1080.Įlsewhere, the Canon XF 405 slid into the top three after proving itself to be as durable as it is capable. The Z190's big brother, however, the Z280, solves this by combining three 1/2-inch chips for a much larger detection area. In the end, it's likely that the size of its sensors, even when stacked and combined, was too small to achieve great footage in poor lighting. The Z190 combines a trio of 1/3-inch sensors to essentially create a 1-inch chip, but despite being particularly feature-rich, its low-light performance still struggled enough to keep it out of the top three.
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That said, similar quality can be found in offerings like the Panasonic AG-CX350, though admittedly you'll have more latitude with color correction when editing footage from the Sony due to its array of three color-dedicated CMOS chips.Īmong the notable upgrades to models in our previous ranking, Sony has come out with two new models in their professional PXW lineup. The Sony PXW-Z280 Compact will get you close to that level of broadcast or cinema quality without the hassle of interchangeable lenses, and with a lighter weight and lower profile than the top dogs.
4k digital video camera series#
The top of this sector moves even more slowly, with offerings like Sony's FS series being among the most expensive and most entrenched models out there.
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As with the Sony, anyone thinking about getting serious with their videography will upgrade from this eventually, but for a family looking for a durable camera that they can use for years without the video looking outdated, it's a great choice. We also added a new JVC model aimed at consumers in the JVC Everio GZ-RY980H. They've relatively recently put out the Sony FDR-AX43 UHD, which isn't particularly groundbreaking, but that has a handful of modern features most users would appreciate, like a 180-degree rotation for its viewscreen and the option to edit movies in-camera. The camcorder industry hasn't exactly been booming in recent years, and most of the major manufacturers are putting their R&D resources elsewhere, though it is good to see continued efforts from a few companies, like Sony, even as their mirrorless DSLRs dominate that sector.