Television quality

[Apocalypse WOW!]

Hey I got an interesting opportunity handed to me, potentially, and I was wondering, what is the cheapest camera you could buy that would suitable for a television program? The HVX or is that still too low quality?

[rick3000]

It depends.
I know a lot of indy filmmakers use an HV20 on professional sets, and that Once (which won an Academy Award) was shot mostly on a handy cam. My local news station actual uses DVX's for there short segments.
The HVX is prosumer / professional camcorder, and should more that enough for a local/smaller channel, but if your doing an HBO special you'll need something a lot better. (and mean better as in upwards of $10k)

[jburas]

It kind of depends. Technically speaking, PBS, The Discovery Channel, and National Geographic have very strict rules for how the footage originates, particularly with HD footage. But you can get around that.

MiniDV is actually broadcast resolution (though not broadcast colorspace), and if handled well, it can look good enough for TV. I worked on an Emmy-winning documentary shot with Panasonic DVX-100s that was shown on PBS. But really we could have gotten the same quality footage with even cheaper MiniDV cameras.

The real answer is that it doesn't matter what camera you used, it matters how the footage looks. This means good lighting, careful focus and white balance, thoughful shot composition, and lots of color correction. If a viewer can't tell the difference between footage shot with a Canon HV20 and a Sony F900 then it doesn't matter.

[WesScog]

The HVX is a pretty amazing camera, it would be more than enough for most Television standards, BUT like Buras said, what matters most is good lighting, focus, white balance, composition, and good color grading.