There is something special about video that you can't get from writing or photographs.  Seeing someone on video is more personal. I really want to see more links to videos on the Etsy site, so I'm starting up this tutorial series to get you started making your own videos.  Making videos gives the world a chance to see the personality and process behind the things you make. 

Let's start with some super cheap cameras.  If you're wanting to make video on a budget, you have a few options.  The simplest option is to use what you've got.  You may already have a video camera.  Did you know that most digital photography cameras have a movie mode that takes great video?  If you've got one of these, you're done looking, start shooting!  A lot of time you can even set these to 640x480 resolution which is good enough to make great web videos.  If you're buying something, the cheapest option is to use a flip camera.  These are pretty inexpensive and they are easy to use.  The resolution isn't fantastic, but they are small and light and easy to carry around and shoot things with.

If you're looking to step it up, the next level of video camera is a DV camera.  You can find these for around 200-300 dollars.  When you're looking for a camera, check to make sure that it's got a microphone jack and a headphone jack so that you can hook up an external mic and listen to the level of the sound as it's recording.  Make sure your computer has a firewire port before getting one of these or you won't be able to transfer the video over.  

If you're feeling fancy, you can get an HD camera.  You can get a camera like the Sony HC1 which records HD video to DV tape (little mini digital video cassette tapes). But my recommendation is that you skip recording to tape.  I'm in favor of using cameras that record straight to an SD Card, which is similar to the little card your digital still camera uses.  If you've got somewhere between $600 and $1000 to spend, I'd recommend, the Sanyo Xacti HD2 which is a great little 720P camera or the  Canon Vixia HF10.  I've also played around with this Panasonic HSC1UP camera which is a bit more expensive, but has 3 chips in it which means the colors are a little snazzier.  All of these record to SD cards. If you are going to be using iMovie (the video editing software that comes free with Macs), you'll want to get the Sanyo Xacti which records to an easily convertable MP4 format. The Panasonic and Canon SD cams both record to AVCHD which is a wonderful format allowing a lot of hi-res info to fit on a card, but it's not compatible with iMovie 7 at this time.

If you've got a serious budget and you're thinking about shooting broadcast HD, you can get the Panasonic HVX200.  We shoot our Handmade Video Portraits on this.  This is a professional level camera and it's awesome.  There's a bit of a learning curve to dealing with P2 cards though, so be prepared to spend a day or two reading the manual.

A great place to go and learn more about cameras is creativecow.net.  The forums there are really helpful and the community is great. 

No matter what camera you get, I recommend getting an extra battery and separate battery charger.  There is nothing worse than running out of batteries when you are shooting something special.

If a wide-angle lens is available for your camera, get it!  I love wide-angle shots to be able to show lots of a room in your frame.

Again, the best thing to get started with is what you've got. 

In the forums I asked for camera recommendations and got this message. 

My next video is about tips for shooting video.  If you've got an idea you can leave a comment, or leave a note in the forums or leave a message at 917-720-4197 and maybe I'll post it with the  next video.