I want to buy a camera for shooting live action footage, but I am no camera expert. That being said, I am looking at getting this one here: [Your text to link here… [www.bestbuy.com], but I just wanted to get input on if there is a better kind to get or if this one is as good as it seems. I appreciate all feedback!

In a way…your not really ‘off’ topic (Setting yourself up with camera/video recording for source material to use in Houdini).

Your link doesn't go to the camera your thinking about.

And since you say you are no camera expert, I would suggest keep your first camera really close to the lower end of the budget spectrum first.

Your going to go through lots of different elements to consider on both the Camera and Houdini side and what you finally want to do for the most part in your set up.

Better to'miss' a few features/capacities of the camera with a low budget camera first; And it will be a good tool to learn what you really want in a camera after working with one for practical projects after a while.

So if the one you linked is more towards the mid/high end, I would suggest you bring it down a few notches.

If you want to do tracking by any manners, you could consider buying a camera with a global shutter.

The more a camera suffers from rolling shutter the more your results will lack accuracy and your tracker will need more tweaking for compensate these effects. This doesn't mean you can't get any good results at all. But especially with faster motions in your footage (e.g. when filming hand-held) it can get cumbersome.

If you don't plan to do tracking I would say there's little to nothing to consider especially for Houdini.

When you want to get into post production techniques like chroma keying and heavy color corrections there would be more to consider. Maybe you should ask your question again at a forum mainly dedicated to post production?

I would definitely take a look at blackmagic. they have some interesting video tech and cameras ($1k to $6k range, mostly)..

the free version of their davinci resolve software is all you will probably ever need for any video stuff unless you are doing a bigger production. It has color correction, titles, and nice 3d composting with a node based interface, so it feels good and flexible for a houdini user. Evidently the commercial version (which is $300) is used for a lot of teevee shows, but i'm too busy playing video games to watch that stuff.

These days, decent video cameras are pretty cheap and easy to come by. many people have a camera on their cellphone that takes nicer looking video than a $1000 camera from 10 or 15 years ago… so, i am inclined to agree with Babaj, it does make sense to just start out and make a few videos with something cheap and then see what features that you feel you are missing so you feel confident making a bigger investment.

also, that blackmagic davinci software has some really good nodes for tracking and stabilization which were very effective for cleaning up some up live action jitters when i tried it (at the expense of some resolution, of course).