Here is the new video camera the club purchased. You will need an SD card with a speed class of 4, 6, or 10. The red arrow points to where you will see the speed class.

A 4gb card will last 55 minutes at high quality.

Information from Canon

While the instruction manual is 223 pages, the camera is fairly easy to operate. Look at Adam’s video below for details. Manual – hfr30-.pdf 

Canonhf_r30 – website

Camera Operator Tips

Zoom In – Try and Zoom in on the speaker and follow him/her around. Don’t just set it on a wide shot setting.

Audio – If you want good audio you will have to either bring the camera closer to the speaker or use the new wireless lavaliere microphone.  I’ve tested it out and it works great. Make sure you turn on the power on both parts of the wireless microphone.
Here’s the wireless microphone we bought.
Sony WCS-999 Camera Mountable 900 MHz Lavalier Microphone System

Both parts need to be turned on and connected to the camera.

Notes:

– To view the video, I recommend you use VLC. It’s a free video viewer which will allow you to watch almost any video. It’s also best to set the audio level to manual. (see the graphic below.)

– MP4 video is recored at 1280x720p – pg 93

– You can get about 10 – ten minute speeches on an 8gb card.

– Windows Movie Maker is a free video editor that does a nice job with these type of videos.

Put the camera in Manual mode to make the recording level changes below.

Sony WCS-999 Camera Mountable 900 MHz Lavalier Microphone System