After spending a few months fooling around with my thrift store camcorders, I decided to upgrade to a better camera. My only criteria was, a budget of $50, a flip out screen, and the camera needed to record to something other than video tape, i.e., a disc or a card. I picked up this Hitachi dvd cam for $50 at a pawn shop. I had to buy, and return two different cameras that didn't work prior to this one, such are the perils of pawn shop shopping, but I still think the money you save when you score something good is worth it. I did some research on DIY steadicam rigs, and I put this together for about $10. Its all pvc, and the base is a coffee can filled with cement, which works as a counter weight for a steady picture when filming. The microphone shockmount was made with pvc and rubberbands. The mic was purchased on ebay for about $30. You can buy one here:http://www.ebay.com/itm/mini-Professional-Shotgun-Interview-Uni-Directional-System-condenser-Microphone-/290719385890?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item43b039c922
These mics are WAY worth the price. Yes there are better mics out there, but on a budget, I can't say enough about these guys. I record the audio onto a Sharp minidisc recorder, which was given to me from a freind. This entire setup came in under $100, and really works great. Here's a video I shot the other day, this is only an example of the camera and stabilizer, as I just put some music over the finished video. Check out this blog for tons of low-budge filming tips, as well as instructions for the stabilizer and mic shockmount:
http://filmflap.blogspot.com/
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