Crappy camcorder needed... best choice?

September 2, 2009 2:19 PM

I'm doing some engineering and need to capture video of highway traffic. Preferably, I'd record on a large flash memory. I need medium resolution.... enough to tell the difference between a motorcycle and a tractor trailer. Looking for recommendations for 'good enough'.

I'm designing some highway instrumentation / sensors and need to associate vehicles with data that I am collecting. Ideally, I'd have a small camera I could aim at my sensors and record video to associate with my data.

I've looked around and found the Samsung SC-MX20 , which seems OK enough, but was wondering if anyone here has a recommendation for something even less good?

This will be a daylight recording session, lasting perhaps 8 hours. I would like to externally power the camera. Buying a huge ass flash card is OK. Cost preference in the <$200 range. Needs a tripod mount hole, and ideally, there would be an on-screen time/date display. Video quality requirements are minimal.

I know there are other cheapskate geeks like me out there, and my laziness at posting this question is tribute to the extraordinary utility of askmetafiler in such matters. I am prepared to wait for up to 10 minutes for an answer! (Usually it's faster!)

posted by FauxScot to technology (9 comments total)

The really cheap way to go would be to borrow/rent someone's camcorder.
posted by b1tr0t at 5:47 PM on September 2

True, b1tr0t, but the owner might be pissed at me for putting it into the kind of conditions I expect it to see! I need to do a dozen sites at once, so that's also an issue. I guess I forgot to mention those factors, which in retrospect, seem critical. Might be $150 each is the best I am going to see.
posted by FauxScot at 6:10 PM on September 2

You don't even need that. These days you can record 640*480 with sound using standard pocket cameras which can be gotten for $100.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 6:12 PM on September 2 [1 favorite]

I just tried an experiment using my Nikon Coolpix, and 640*480*30fps resulted in an AVI which was about a megabyte per second.

I've got an 8G card in mine, and that would be good for more than 2 hours at the highest resolution. Plus my camera can run 15 fps instead of 30, and 320*240 instead of 640*480. At 320*240*15fps my 8G chip would last more than 16 hours.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 6:26 PM on September 2

In that case, I'd go with some random Canon or Nikon P&S that will stream arbitrarily large files to the SD card. Before you buy a dozen of them, check to be sure that the camera you choose can record files larger than 2gb (if you need that much space at your chosen resolution).

There are lots of good options, check out DPReview for details on a lot of cameras in one place.
posted by b1tr0t at 6:53 PM on September 2

You might want to include Panasonic in your list too - I find that the video from my LX3 is at least as good as my H104. Both are probably prohibitive for your application.
posted by b1tr0t at 6:55 PM on September 2

Actually, the limiting factor with a pocket camera would be batteries. Maybe the chip could last that long, but there's no way the battery would do so.

But coming up with any kind of solution which can do 8 hours non-stop would be challenging even with a much higher budget. I assumed the OP was willing to accept some gaps in his recording, which would be taken up by replacing batteries and memory chips.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:13 PM on September 2

Good point, but I doubt you'd get more than 2 hours out of a dedicated camcorder.
posted by b1tr0t at 9:18 PM on September 2

There are other ways. A webcam connected to a notebook computer with a big HD and the right kind of software could record for hours without problems, as long as it was being powered from a car's cigarette lighter or some other power source capable of lasting that long.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:06 PM on September 2