inside installations — online course 'video registration of installations'

Additional information – Choosing a camera When choosing camera equipment, consider and compare the following:
—	The quality and ease of use of the acquisition format.
—	The quality of the lens.
	–	Optical properties of the lens. A wider lens gives the camera more flexibility especially when it is a fixed lens; especially if the wide image is not too distorted.
	–	Controls for the lens. Mechanical zoom is usually preferable to the servo driven zoom as it usually grants more subtle control over it. Some servo zooms are quite ok though.
	–	Quality of the “glass” i.e. how fast it is and how much distortions the lens makes. In full tele, for example, or in full wide positions you will often see the drawbacks of cheap lenses.
	–	Quality of the image stabiliser if there is one.
—	The possibility to change lenses.
—	The sensor.
	–	Most modern cameras need three chips for best results. Although the developments in CMOS chip field might change this fact soon.
	–	The physical size of the chip. The performance of the chip is usually directly connected to the physical size of the device. The less dense the pixels are on the sensor the easier it is to technically get better sensitivity. Another reason for bigger surface is the optics. For depth of field, i.e. the possibility to manipulate depth of field to separate an out of focus foreground, the object in focus and a blurred background, you want as big an imager as possible. This means that the results can be more what is considered ‘photographic’ or ‘cinematic’, and you can emphasise different elements in the frame with focus. Professional video cameras have traditionally been equipped with 2/3 inch sensors, semi-professional and low end professional cameras have had 1/2 inch chips whereas consumer and semi-professional cameras have traditionally had 1/3 inch sensors. In past years 1/4 and even 1/6 inch sensors have become more common in cheap consumer cameras.
	–	The native resolution of the imager is important. Beware that some cameras produce higher resolution image than the native resolution of the sensor by using so called pixel shift technology. This does produce an image that seems higher in resolution but is not as good as one with a resolution with higher native resolution.
—	Quality of the EVF (electronic viewfinder).
	–	Pixel count or resolution is important for focusing.
	–	High-resolution monochrome viewfinders have been, and continue to be, the standard image-checking tool throughout the broadcast and professional videography field. Colour tends to confuse the eye when judging focus and contrast.
—	Quality of LCD (liquid crystal display)
	–	Pixel count (resolution)
	–	Colour calibration possibilities. Note: A useful feature to have both EVF and LCD on at the same time.
—	Audio
	–	Whether the camera has balanced audio inputs (XLR)
	–	If it can record and adjust the level separately on audio channels.
	–	How much camera noise, such as the motor noise and so on, is picked up by the built in microphone.
—	Ergonomics
	–	How does the balance of the camera feel? If it is front or back heavy it is heavier to use over longer periods.
	–	How easily one can reach and operate the different buttons on the camera while filming?
	–	A shoulder mount camera with good balance is much more stable and easy to operate than a hand held.
The affordable HD cameras discussed in the links below are also sometimes called half HD as the de-facto resolution of the images usually amount to half of the high end HD camcorders. These are likely going to replace the miniDV, DVCAM, DVCPRO line of cameras, which has since the end of the 90ies been the standard for documentations. One thing to remember when going for a HD camera is that progressive is much better than interlaced when compressing the documentation to a distribution. With the current compression algorithms and capacity of hardware 1080i25 looks much worse than 720p50 when the bandwidth starts to come close to 10 Mbps, even though it in theory should have more resolution.