Aaarrrrgghhh! I’ve been dealing with this issue for about a week now. OP, you are so right on this. There have been sightings in Austin lately,
very close to where I live and I thought, well, okay, I’ll get a camcorder and film them from a different location to corroborate their sightings.
Ha, not hardly, the Sony I picked up which supposedly had it all was worthless for night shooting. Lowflying helicopters went all blurry and looked
“otherworldly”, streetlights when zoomed in on became the “plasma” ships I have seen on youtube many times. If you moved the tripod at all it
looked like a smooth high speed movement of the object. If you held it in your hand the object would dance all over. Also it could not even pick up
high flying planes, nada.
I returned it yesterday and upgraded to what my pocket could afford which was a Canon HV20 3MP High Definition MiniDV Camcorder with 10x Optical Image
Stabilized Zoom. Though not much better than the Sony it has a couple of features that should help, a stabilizer which will cut down on dancing
objects and also the HD quality. The Canon rep at canon.com said that the HV20 had another extra that I don’t recall that put it ahead of the other
small ones for night shooting Btw, this is a $900 dollar camera. If I went for it and bought the Canon that could really do the job it would cost
$3000 not including extra lenses.
Here’s some sites that are helpful, and at Willoughbys, where I bought the Canon, (at a much lower price) they also suggested the big camcorders but
due to cost they also fell back on the same Canon that canon.com had suggested. It’ll be delivered Monday. Btw, if you have any camera questions
Willoughbys is excellent, they have been in business a long time and are very knowledgeable.
www.usa.canon.com...
www.willoughbys.com...
www.willoughbys.com...
I’ll keep at it as I have seen some unusual things in the sky lately, but to actually film them as I see them might just be impossible, at least
until I have an extra $3000 to spend.
STM
[edit on 11/27/2008 by seentoomuch]