Buying a digital camera for MOC photography

[Darth Dino]

Hi

two things: if you think your light sucks, change that. Not a 10000€ camera will get you a nice video if you have bad light. But great light (my suggestion is pretty cheap, less than 100€ if you had to get new "building site halogenes") will even work on simple and cheap cameras.

Sencond thing is image stabilisation. Forget about that! Even the best lenses for many 1000€ with build in image stabilisation are perfect for images but bad when on a camera that moves. Only physical stanilisation hoves you good videos. Did you ever watched "making ofs"? Hollywood have horrible expensive steady arms for cameras but only use them for a couple of dig fight avzions scenes. Every other shot is from a tripod or from cameras on rails.

Your object moves and the cam is steady. Not the other was around.

Dino

[dhc6twinotter]

I use a Canon T2i DSLR with 18-135 IS lens. It does HD video well, but my only complaints is the lack of continuous auto focusing in video mode. Once you figure out how to shoot with no continuous focusing, It works great for filming LEGO. One advantage of shooting with a DSLR is that you have a manual focusing ring. It can be fun to play with, and that is something that only the higher-end video cameras have. Newer DSLRs (Canon T5i, 70D, and some Nikon models) have continuous auto focusing in video mode.

The video below was shot with my Canon T2i camera:

Proper lighting makes a huge difference as well. DSLRs can be a little more forgiving, but good lighting is important, almost more important than a great camera. I still have a lot to learn in this respect, and I've taken some pretty terrible pictures with my DSLR. If you have a proper light setup, you can get by with a cheaper camera. Tripod or something else to sit your camera on helps too.

If you're looking at point-and-shoot cameras, I really like the Canon Digital Elph line. I have an old SD450 that I carry with me as a backup. It has no image stabilization and It's terrible in low-light situations, but it's a good camera otherwise. I think all the cameras in the Digital Elph line have IS now.

I'm still learning all this myself, but those are just my thoughts based on what I know thus far.

[legomuppet9]

Pentax are always nice cameras from my experience, They're quite expensive, but this one has 1080p http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pentax-X5-Bridge-Camera-Optical/dp/B00911YEAQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389553077&sr=8-1&keywords=PENTAX I personally have a Panosonic Lumix bridge camera thing (for video, but I don't like it) and a Pentax K-10D at the moment