Want advice on buying an inexpensive point & shoot camera

[dannylightning]

you are not going to get good video in low light with a inexpensive point and shoot camera.. i had a go pro hero 3+ silver i think it was,, not the latest model but the one before that and it was said to do well in low light. indoors in my house with the lights on the video looked terrible,

the cheap point and shoot cameras i have had do not take good low light video at all. very grainy video from those.. looks like crap.. you will really need good lighting if you want good video quality.. a cheap point and shoot can take descent video and photos but not in low light...

here is some video of me singing a song taken with a low end camera... its not recorded in hd but if the lighting is not good in your house you probably end up with something simular.

 

[bugshutter]

you are not going to get good video in low light with a inexpensive point and shoot camera.. i had a go pro hero 3+ silver i think it was,, not the latest model but the one before that and it was said to do well in low light. indoors in my house with the lights on the video looked terrible,

the cheap point and shoot cameras i have had do not take good low light video at all. very grainy video from those.. looks like crap.. you will really need good lighting if you want good video quality.. a cheap point and shoot can take descent video and photos but not in low light...

here is some video of me singing a song taken with a low end camera... its not recorded in hd but if the lighting is not good in your house you probably end up with something simular.

Thanks. That is dark. Can't see your face very well.

 

[bugshutter]

In this article, it's not clear to me why they rate one camera higher than another. One camera is given a C+ and the other an A-. It seems like the difference is not explained very clearly. I'm not sure which camera to pick among the choices. Any advice?

Yes. Average them. One can find all manner of opinion on the internet, and in most cases we cannot know which camera manufacturers are favored by which reviewers, or why. I would not be surprised to learn that some reviewers are rewarded for flattering reviews and vice-versa.

What I usually do is read as many reviews as I can, try to find the similarities and differences, and make my best guess at which ones are more objective and which ones seem biased.

If a camera has the features you want, concentrate on reading that part from several reviewers and sort of "average" them into something you can use to help make your decision.

Furthermore, there may be something important left out of the text, such as build quality or image quality that the reviewer has mentioned in previous articles, and the reader is simply expected to remember that from last month's review.

But in the larger scheme of things, you're just buying a piece of technology, and it will either work or not, do what they claim or not, last more than a year or not, be better than the competition or not, and you just take your chances and pay your money. Yes, I've been burned a few times, and I've also been quite pleased a few times.

I'll have to do more reading. Thanks to you and everyone who replied to my post.

 

[Dao]

In my opinion, if you already has a video recording device and the only issue is low light, getting lighting equipment maybe a better route based on your budget.

 

[dannylightning]

In my opinion, if you already has a video recording device and the only issue is low light, getting lighting equipment maybe a better route based on your budget.

thats a good point.. you can get some studio lighting, if you want video and photos in a low light room you want constant lighting, something like this. not sure how good those are i don't know much about the constent lighting, S303B but if you are happy with the quality of what you have that would fix your low light problem in your house..

for photos i have a couple of off camera flashes i can put on light stands with umbrellas.. i can set the on camera flash to the lowest setting so its not really doing much of anything but the speed lights see that flash go off and that causes them to go off. http://www.amazon.com/Neewer-VK750-Speedlite-Display-Cameras/dp/B00GE4MNQA, even one of them works very well and you do not need the umbrellas but it spreads the light out allot more and makes a nice soft light.. this kind of thing would not be usable for video.. strobes would be better than speed lights but the speed lights are small and easy to deal with.. than i just bought some nice light stands and some cheap umbrellas.. the constant lighting will also work well for photos.. but a flash type thing is probably the better way to go but if you are needing to do both i would go with a constant light set up...

my low end point and shoot camera does take descent video outdoors in good lighting so if you are happy with the quality of what now check out some studio lights..