my own video camera

To optimise the quality of my work I will be purchasing my own video camera. Hiring cameras from the library can be less than ideal, the cameras and tripods are of varying quality so if other students have hired the high quality equipment you end up with equipment that disadvantages your filming, for example, a flimsy tripod which will not adjust properly. Another issue is the restriction from taking the camera out of the campus for weekends. Considering I have some large blocks of holiday time, it would be of significant benefit to posses my own camera which I can use unconditionally. One feature that would benefit me highly would be a wide screen lens. This feature allows the user to manually choose which ratio they would like to film in. However cameras with wide screen lenses seem to be considerably more expensive. I will also require an optical zoom and decent picture quality. At this stage I’m looking at a price range of around $400 however considering the price of good quality camera technology I may have to compromise.