Quote:
Originally Posted by rhambone
Whats the deal with High Definition Cam's having a lower zoom level?
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It's not actually about HD; it's about cheap cams vs. expensive cams. Better cams have larger lenses and to make them have a zoom factor of larger than 20 would be prohibitively expensive and result in huge heavy glass.
Little cheap camcorders have tiny lenses so to give them zoom ratios in the 30s and 40s isn't that big a deal -- but the picture is still crappy.
And you absolutely need a tripod with anything over 10x, as noted above, especially with HD, which is very sensitive to vibration.
You can find HDV cams with up to 20x zoom, but they tend to be expensive -- the Canon A1 and the Sony V1 are two examples; so is the now-defunct FX7. I think 12x is the best you'll find on the lower-cost models.
Sony makes some pretty good 2x extenders for their small cams. An HC7 or 9 plus a 37mm screw-in 2x extender would cost less than one-third of a V1 or Canon A1. But it doesn't increase the
zoom ratio -- it would still be 10x or 12x, as before. It doubles the apparent
focal length. So even at the wide end you'd be twice as "close."