I am looking for a indoor video camera for recording sports

January 8, 2025 11:21 AM

I do HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) and want to record some of my longsword matches both for personal critique and (maybe) putting on social media. I just wanted to see if anyone had anything other than GoPro to recommend? Recording will mostly just be on a tripod and indoors so wanted it see if I could get something a bit cheaper that doesn't have all the bells and whistles that a GoPro does but also isn't just using my phone. Thanks!
posted by Captain_Science to Technology (5 answers total)

Best answer: What do you need out of this that your phone doesn’t do?

This will *not* be cheaper than a single GoPro but the coverage is really nice: For an action sport that I do I have an Insta360 GO3 on my hat (POV) plus a Insta360 X3 (360° camera) clamped somewhere or on a tripod. I edit them together in Davinci for personal critique (and posting).

(Most people I do this sport with just use their phones, sometimes in combination with the hat cam.)
posted by supercres at 11:43 AM on January 8

Best answer: Yeah, a lot of phones offer really high-quality video recording now. If your phone is reasonably new, you should try it out.

One thing I will say: if you plan on narrating any of your bouts live, you should really look into getting a lav mic. Looks like you can get cheapo kits that will interface directly with your phone for about $20, but the kinds that youtube personalities use tend to be more in the $100+ range. There will be a huge difference in sound quality.
posted by adamrice at 11:54 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Agreed with the comments above. I would bet all fairly recent phones record 4k, which is plenty for what you want to do. I mean, if Steven Soderbergh and Danny Boyle can shoot multi-million dollar features on iphones, you can bet one (including Android options here too ) will be fine for what you need – including slow-motion, panoramic, etc.

+1 to the note about audio as well...your phone should cover the video quality, but won't be great for sound, generally speaking. If that's something you want, I would put the money towards that.

Speaking as someone who works in video, I would pay more attention to the angle/location of your camera and tripod, and I'd be sure the lighting is fairly decent. I'm not familiar with the matches you're wanting to record, but I imagine the lighting will be overhead and fairly flat, which is fine for your purposes.
posted by Molasses808 at 1:23 PM on January 8 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks everyone. I will probably just get a small tripod for my phone and leave it at that for now. I mostly wanted to see if there was a better option out there that I may of been overlooking.
posted by Captain_Science at 5:09 AM on January 9

If you want to step it up a little bit, you can get a mobile phone gimbal, which provides additional hand held stabilization while walking and many of which feature active tracking - you just add the tripod legs, tell it what to track, and it will automagically keep the camera focused on you while using their video recording app. For example here is the DJI Osmo Mobile SE Smartphone Gimbal, but you can find other products to check out here at B&H. (For something smaller, the DJI Pockets are pretty amazing, I've got the 2nd generation and it rocks...)
posted by rambling wanderlust at 6:03 AM on January 9