If you had my budget what would you do??

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mjh

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Ok, the budget is about US$4000 for camera and housing. If I can get a great system for less even better. In a perfect world I want a camcorder that also can take decent stills, something I can get a decent 8x10 out of. My research shows right now the Sony 330 is about the only thing that fits the bill. But if this was YOUR money what would you do???
 
WOW! 4 grand!
I would take a trip around the world! :)

I went to the sony website to check out that model but I couldn't find it.. the closest was the DCR-DVD300 - that only took 1MP stills... likely not enough to get a decent print for the size you are looking for... Do you have the link???
 
I would get a housing for my Sony 318 and with the remaining $$$ I would get a motor and transmission for my boat! :D
 
Yes it is a great budget. It was in stock from a loved Great Aunt who passed away. My wife is great and said spend it on something you want but typically would do a "budget version" of. So the goal is to get a travel type set-up, I was going to go with a still set up but most people (dinner guest forced to look at either stills or videos of our diving) seem to like watching the videos.

The Sony PC DVR330 claims stills of 3 megapixils. While scouting around saw ad for new Samsung duel use camera that will have two lenses and take 4megapix stills. Might have to wait awhile why this tech develops or could I do two good systems on this budget.
 
You can get a great digital still system for $1000-1500, depending on housing, arm and strobe choices. I'm not familiar with anything in video.
 
3-4 MP should be enough to get the print sizes you want - but from what I've heard the stills from a digital camcorder are not as good as what you would get in a still system. With that budget you should spend $1000-1500 as per Dee's suggestion and still have quite a bit left over for the camcorder setup.
Now the only thing with splitting it like that is you may not get the absolute cream of the crop of both worlds but you'll definatley walk away with a pretty darn good setup!
If you go this route, getting both, you can likely save some $$$ on getting lights that will work with both the camcorder and camera.
Sorry to hear about your Aunt...
 
mjh

man i would love to have a budget like that, but trying to do prints from a camcorder chip isnt the best way to do it as, because the chips used for still and video cams are totally different in the way they process a image(its real complicated to explain the differences without going to technical, maybe someone else can explain it in easier way.

now to do a ideal 8x10 inch print you need a camera with a 2400x3000(7.2 mp cam) pixel sensor so that no interpolation is needed (reason you need 300 dpi is that this is the same DPI that pro photo printers(like fuji frontiers, etc), but you can get a good 8x10 from a camera with a 4mp sensor but a 5 will have more detail in the image.

Yes i know you can interpolate from a smaller sensor but i prefer to do as little interpolation as possible because the software is guessing at the detail of the image and the algerythems unless in high end software(Genuine Fractals) isnt the best as most of the time its just taking the one pixel and mulitplying it(IE taking a 4x6 andblowing it up to a 8x12 would take one individual and mulitply it by 4 to get that big of a print).

now if your set on doing stills from a vid cam there is one cam that i have seen its prints from that looked excellent and that is the Sony TRV950 3ccd camera, but that and the housing for it will take out your budget.

sorry for the short post im having to leave for a awards dinner, and will expand on my post after i get back or in the morning

FWIW

Tooth

as for

your best bet would be to do a set up of each
 
You could probably just about scrape a DSLR rig together for that sort of dosh.
 
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I think if I had that $$$ for an underwater setup I might be looking at the Canon 5 MP SLR Digital Rebel and the soon to be Ikelite housing for it along with twin strobes if their was enough change leftover.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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