Video cameras for ballroom competitions

A common question on the ballroom forums is about which cameras to use for video. So, I thought I would write up a quick introduction to ballroom video cameras. Like any products, there is a range of introductory, "pro-sumers", and professional equipment you can choose. Here, I will focus on the novice users, suggest what to features to look for, and even make a few popular suggestions for models.

For starters, many people choose a camera(video and still) thinking that higher resolution, or higher technical specs is better for shooting. Although this may be true, realize that there are pre-event, event, and post-event logistics and issues to consider.  Many times I see people buy fancy cameras and spend a lot of money to only find that the camera does not fit their work flow(pre-event, event, and post-event) and get frustrated with the equipment!

The biggest dichotomy is whether to choose a videocamera, a still camera with video feature, or a "hybrid". Although each has their pros and cons, it's best to find the type that fits your needs the best. I will discuss this in the 2nd section where we talk about some technical issues like what formats to use and camera sensors.

Finally, I talk about some popular choices and recommendations for ballroom video taping.  If you want to skip all the talk, go straight here!  However, you can always go back to read the rest of it to understand what you can do with the camera.

1 - Work flow

Work flow: Pre-event

My typical setup is as follows. In pre-event setup, I recharge all my batteries(you may need more than a few, depending on the length of the comp, the number of events you want to film, etc...), get the necessary media(DV tapes, memory cards, etc... see below), and packing everything in an easy to access, convenient way so that I don't have to think about it since I'm typically competing as well as filming. One trouble with DV tapes is that they are hard to fully erase, and you always have to play through parts of the tape to see what's on it. This can be a time consuming process, otherwise you may loose some important videos which you have not transfered over. It's cumbersom when you shoot lots of videos. Here, the memory card-based cameras will save you time(see more below about formats).

Here, the smaller the camera, with the longer battery life, and preferably a portable separate battery charger is desirable. For example, the one below(for the Sony DSC M1 and M2 series) is one unit which plugs directly into the wall making travel and packing simple, is cheap($14.99). The optional car adapter and european adapter you can leave at home if you know where you are going doesn't need them. Otherwise, it's convenient if you are driving a few hours and need to recharge in the car! It also only takes a few hours to fully charge a battery.

Work flow: Event

Here, you can plan for the worst, which is that you are dancing and video taping at the same time. Although you can use a tripod to have your setup ready to roll, I'm always a little weary since I've seen tons of cameras walk away at comps. As a result, I'm looking for a camera which is small enough to put in a jacket pocket or bag pocket, easy to pull out without extra cables, and a fast start up.

Without going into too much technical features(that's for later), you will for sure want a camera with a tiltable lcd screen since you may need to film freehand, above the crowd. Many still cameras with video features will not do this!

You will also want to find a camera with a good and steady zoom. Note that many still cameras with video features do not zoom while in video mode! This is surprising, but video zoom is much more complicated than still camera zoom because it requires a quiet zoom mechanism and fast auto focus.

Finally, go for long battery life, and small and high quality video storage formats. For DV(more later), each tape will last about 60-90 minutes, while memory card-based cameras will have a smaller capacity.

Work flow: post-event

This is probably the most important part of the work flow - what you do after the event! There's no point to shooting all this footage so that it can happily sit in the camera never to be viewed again! Video distribution is a major issue, and can make or break a camera for someone. If you are like most people, they want to send out videos to your friends, families, coaches, etc... Some cameras make this a non-trivial process. Here, this is not specific to ballroom videography, but the shear volume of videos can amplify the issues.

What do you plan to do with the videos afterwards?

a) only watch it for yourself without archiving
This is easy. You can leave it in the camera, hook it up to your tv if desired, and watch it. Then next time, you can just override what's on the camera. Here, almost any camera will do.

b) Make fancy dvds to send to grandpa

okay, maybe not grandpa, but parents, friends, etc... This usually means that you want high quality images which you can edit on your computer, create a dvd with menus and background music, make labels, and burn the dvd. Although this method can result in the highest quality of videos both for distributing to friends and archiving for your own record, it can consumer a tremendous amount of time. Consider that for every hour of video footage, you can easily spend 2 to 10 hrs in the editing room.

If this is what you desire, than you will want to buy a high quality miniDV camera, with 3 CCDs or so. These can be high end consumer cameras, or "prosumer". see below for recommendations.

c) Quickly share the videos with family and friends

This is typically what I do more. I don't have the time to do fancy DVDs, and I want to publish the videos to friends ASAP, and archive it so that I can get back to practice, or go compete again. I don't plan to edit the clips.

Here, the memory card-based cameras win hands down! These cameras record clips as computer files which you can download from the camera, or through a memory card reader. This takes typically 10-15 minutes.

As opposed to the DV cameras, these require that you "link" to the camera through firewire for usb2 and download the clip. For every 1 hour of footage, it requires 1 hour to simply transfer the files to the computer. Next, the DV raw format, although high quality, is a monsterously large computer file. You then need to recompress the video is something more reasonable. This requires another 3-4 hr. All and all, this step requires 3-5 hr for each hour of video footage just to "digitize" and transfer to the computer to a workable format.

The memory card-based cameras saves you all this time because it immediately saves the footage to a video format. Although some cameras save in larger formats than others, it still typically saves you 2-4 hrs in your work flow!

Next, you can distribute these videos by immediately uploading them to youtube, or burn them to a data CD or DVD to give to family and friends. However, there are several drawbacks for all the saved time. Typically the quality of the video images is lower than that of the DV videos. You have little or no ability to adjust the quality of the saved video format because the original "raw" video is lost and only the compressed video is left. Any compressed video(and image) formats leave "artifacts", or little swigglies which aren't there in real life. Because the DV format saves the original data, you can adjust the compression parameters to minimize the artifacts.

Work flow summary

Memory card-based cameras can save you 2-4 hrs after the competition because it gives computer files which you can upload to youtube immediately, or burn to CD or DVD. However, you lose the control video image quality and ability to do fancier techniques.

2 - Technical details

The biggest decision in a video camera is whether to choose a miniDV videocamera, a "HDD" video camera, a still photo camera with video, or a "hybrid".

MiniDV, or "Mini Digital Video" cameras are more traditional and can result in higher quality(see previous section about post-event workflow). These cameras use a tape that go for fairly reasonable price. The tapes are reusable and are fairly rugid. The drawback is that the footage needs to be "digitized" to the computer which takes 1 hr per hour of footage. There are too many of these to talk about. Generally Canon produce fairly good quality video cameras, while Panasonic is best value.

A "HDD"(harddrive-based) camera looks like a traditional video camera, but stores the footage usually on a built-in harddrive. Although the files can be large and require recompression, they can then be transfered to the computer fairly quickly. These cameras are growing in popularity amongst professionals and "prosumers". An example of a high end one is the JVC Everio 3ccd. More recommendations below.


Still cameras with video are typically good for shooting still images, but have a video feature "thrown in". Most typical still cameras have a video feature, but you should be very careful about reading the specs on the video feature before using these as your primary competition video camera. The older cameras have a limit to the length of the video clip(usually 30 seconds to 2 min), you can not zoom while using the video mode, and the video quality tends to be fairly low quality.

The hybrid cameras are those which are made to do both video and still images. While the dedicated video cameras can do bad to mediocre images, and the still cameras do bad to mediocre video, the hybrids can do mediocre to slightly better images and videos. The drawback to these cameras is the quality of the image sensor. Many of them are not good for low light which is typical at ballroom competitions. There are a few exceptions to this including the Sony DSC M1 and M2 series. These do 5 megapixel stills, 640x480 videos at 30 frames per second and do okay in low light. Note that all the videos I've shot for the blog are done on an M1.


Note that a bad example of a hybrid is the Sanyo Xacti line. There are a number of models, but I find these are bad in low light. They get very grainy, and even in good lighting too! The image quality is low, and video compression has too many artifacts. The only saving grace for these things is the cute form factor and the cheap price. The Sony's are certainly not cheap, but I've been quite happy with them for competitions, and for vacationing and general use!

3 - Recommendations

MiniDV cameras Again, there are hundreds of models to choose from and the review is too extensive to cover here. A good place for reviews is:
CNET
Camcorder Info

HDD Video cameras

For high end, prosumer, this is one of the best in the market - for a price:


Other JVC everio models also do a good job. All have a descent amount of zoom, the video images are mpeg2(note that they save as their own format filenames, but you can simply rename them to .mpg to use as regulard mpeg2 files!) The MIT Ballroom Dance Team has a pair of these introductory-level model which they used to film the 2007 MIT Open competition. Videos can be found here. These also do 4:3 and 16:9 ratios. They are extremely light, the batter life is okay, and low light quality is quite good. Note that I do not recommend these for still photos. They, like all video cameras, are not made for good still images.


Sony's DCR-SR series also has a good selection. The prosumer/professional model:


Note that Sony also has cameras which burn to a mini-DVD. These are convenient, but have a short battery life because it is constantly writing to the DVD drive! I would almost recommend these if not for the fact: 1) short battery life, 2) limited capacity on the one-use mini-DVD discs, and 3) high price of the DVD media.

Still cameras with Video

I generally don't recommend these for serious video use because many have low video resolution, low frame rate(you need at least 25 frames per second so that it doesn't look choppy!), the inability to zoom while in video mode, and poor video compression. However, there are a few up and coming cameras which have the potential to address these issues.

One is the Canon S2, which has 12x zoom, image stabilizer, zoom in video mode, no limit on video length, and descent stills:



Hybrids

In general, I would recommend this up and coming class of cameras for ballroom competitions! I think there is a lot of potential is this field and the limiting factor is the sensor quality. This is a funny thing because there are better sensors out in the market, but the manufacturers are holding out so that they can make more money off of cheaper sensors first before releaseing betters sensors used in video cameras and still cameras.

The favorite, of course, is the Sony DSC-M1 and M2. I've had the M1 for almost 2 years, and have recommended to friends and family. Those who have bought it are as happy as I am with it! The M1 and M2 are nearly identifical cameras, except the exterior is slightly different. These have some of the best low light sensors in the market, and the still images are comparable to dedicated still cameras! They use a nifty trick on the sensors to get this quality(which I can get into in the comments if people wish). The best part about the camera is that it saves the footage in MP4 format which results in about 1/10 the file size of traditional mpeg2 format, and for arguable better quality. The downside is that Sony has decided to stop this line, so it might be hard to find a store which still carries it. I've been waiting for Sony to resurrect the technology is a new line, but haven't seen anything yet. :( Anyhow, get it while you still can!



Just for reference, the Sanyo Xacti line is the closest competitor, and here's a few models from. However, from what I've seen of sample videos, I'm not too happy with its low light capabilities. Perhaps the newer models do better?


and a fancy waterproof one:



Feel free to add comments, corrections and questions!

EDIT: Check Steve's digicam for extensive reviews of still cameras. Typically the reviews will include information about the camera's video features, and sometimes video samples too. Look for how the camera preforms in low light(indoors, at night, etc...)