How to build a camcorder
I have always wanted a camcorder for myself and not just any camcorder. I wanted one a bit like a professional broadcast camcorder, where I would be able to mount ad-ons like pre-amps, lights and all the other ever so cool stuff you’ll see professionals packing. However I’m not about to pay the horiffic price of eg. a Red Camera . So let’s just build one…
Basically, a camcorder only consists of 8 things;
1) The optics
I’ll recomend SLR optics - they come in all shapes and sizes in a good quality at reasonable prizes compared to Camcorder optics. It’s time for dusting off the MF-lenses you’ve got in the attick. For how to mount the SLR optics on a CCD Camera read this article
2) Capturing
To capture the light that comes through the optics, I use a standard surveillance camera. These goodies comes in all shapes and sizes. I recommend a monochrome with 480 tv-lines or more. Colour cameras are quite expensive especially if you’d want 3CCD, and it’s very hard to control the colours of your recordings, if you don’t know what you’re doing. You should never choose a higher value than 0.5 lux when it comes to light sensitivity. If you stick to this you’ll always be able to shoot video indoor with just a few lamps turned on.
3) Storage/Recording
For storage/recording I have used a SONY Digital8 recorder. They are easy to come by and relatively cheap on e-bay. The really cool thing about these recorders is that you can record both from an analogue video source or digital (firewire) video source. So if your standards get higher you can always buy a security camera with a Firewire output. And the quality of these recorders are superb though they are aren’t that young. No doubt this is a pro video tool and with lots and lots of option settings.
Alternatively you can also use the Portable HDD recorder
4 + 5) Microphone & Pre-Amp
I won’t be getting into the Mic and Pre-Amp (this could be an article just in itself), although I would suggest a shotgun-microphone with a build-in Pre-Amp. Small battery operated Pre-Amps with a decent sound quality are hard to find…
6) Device to see WTF you are recording
Since decent viewfinders that you can actually use for this project are very hard and expencive to come by, I’ve chosen to use a LCD-screen instead. Luckily, I already had one that was as “made for the job” all ready with a hotshoe build on, so it would be easy to mount.
7) Batteries
Since both the recorder and viewfinder-screen carry their own battery pack, the only thing I had to supply with power was the security-camera (12v dc) done with 8 1,5v AA batteries. A lot of security cameras can even take aprox. +-3, but for the safety of your camera it may be a good idea to put a “current controller” between the camera and the battery pack.
Defining these 7 points, the rest is like hooking up your VCR with your tv… Well, almost. When connected right the battery data, recording data, etc. will show in the display… just like a regular camcorder.
So that I didn’t have to carry the whole thing in a bag and use 5 hands to operate it I have put on some sort of frame. This was made from an old Velbon monopod and other bits.
If you would like to see how it works out take a look at the film klip below…
I used the DIY Camcorder with a Nikkor 35-70mm f/3.3-4.5 lens.
Recorded through my window on a rainy and cloudy day in June in Denmark.
So whats to gain on this monstrosety…?
Well… You can say you build a camcorder yourself of course but you allso get a setup you can alter in so many ways… actually all the way to pro if you got the greens for it.
Make it go all digital with HDD recorder put on a 3CCD camera etc. there is no limit.
And if you like old B/W films then this could be the way, since you can make a pro B/W camera for less than 1000$.
The down side…
For the time being you’l have to do with out autofocus and you have to spend cuite som time chosing your components, but maybe that’s not a downside afterall. Most pro cameramen wouldn’t relie on autofocus and the time spend shearching for bits to your camera will only make it fit near 100% to the job.
39 Comments so far
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you`r awsome… oyear
This is great!
Your photo and explanation is very clear. I want to try it now that you’ve shown how it works!
That’s fabulous. Roughly how much did it cost to build?
omg dude you really pwn stuff, wish i was nifty with the screwdriver so i could make me one of these jamjams.
The price tag is in the vicinity 700$ or less, where the majority of the money is for the digital8 recorder.
Thanks for your comments
So, your camera is obviously not B&W. What camera did you use, and was $700 the price for the setup with the color camera?
This would be alot cooler if you put an embeaded linux box onboard that captured the video to an array of USB flash drives. You could use one of the more powerful linux based routers with USB 2.0 or one of those NSLU2 usb file servers. You wouldn’t have much CPU power todo compression and I don’t know if there is enough CPU power to handle uncompressed video. Maybe there is a linux supported usb 2.0 video capture device that will do light compression in hardware.
Another option would be to get a laptop with a broken screen. Some can stripped down to fit into this form factor.
Try an old Stryker endoscopy camera; they are actually manufactured by Sony and have the same high-quality 3CCD sensor arrays used in their DVCAM camcorders. The only problem would be how to power the head unit; most of them need a 120V input.
That is a really excellent project, i tried the same thing by fitting a sigma zoom lens from my minolta x-gm camera onto my camera phone, but even with all the optics, (I fitted on some closeup filters on the lens mount end) all i had was relatively good 352×288 video (limits of phone).
However your project has sparked off some ideas and I thank you for that,
best of luck in future projects
Hi, I was just wondering how you would go about conecting the LCD display to the Portable DV HDD Recorder? I’m asking because I am looking into building something like this, using the DV HDD instead of the Sony Digital8 device.
What you’ve ended up with is a really bulky camera with quality worse than a cheap DV camera off of ebay. I dont see what you think youve gained? Plus comparing it to a red camera is just ridiculous. Its like making a boxcart and then saying its like a ferrari because they both have 4 wheels.
I use a CCTV camera (security camera) for most of my in-house video projects. However, I got a really good deal on a professional color security cam with an S-video output along side the usual BNC. I run it straight to the S-Video input on my video capture card. This thing produces much better quality than any consumer based camcorder I’ve ever seen (although the lack of portability kind of kills the comparison) But yeah, it is too bad they don’t use these type of CCDs in most camcorders. Works great in low-light.
I had two ideas which may or may not be good. I think I would use a helmet cam, they are likely to have auto focus and they are battery powered. some have night vision. My second idea was to use three BW cameras with a prism to split the colors from the lens to each camera so in post production you could get the perfect color ratio by merging the three pictures together.
Really not bad. It reminds me Frankenstein where body is assembled from different parts.
This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title . Thanks for informative article
Thank you for cool site,
Some good stuff…
Thank you for posting this article, I’m going to make one similar to this.
But some things that I have found are that you can spend $150 on an aiptek video camera that also records anything with an RCA out, instead of using the digital8 recorder.
also, I was wondering how you made the frame, or body, that holds everything together. I have access to a welder, and I was wondering if I could get a blueprint on it, or just more pictures.
Thank you
Cool site.
Could you use a cheap IR camera off of ebay with a IR flood light for something like this?
If it has a C-mont for the lens… then yes.
But the SLR-lenses would proberbly be in the way of the IR flood light.
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article , but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
Any reason why you used a Digital8 recorder vs a miniDV recorder ? And is there a way to get more resolution by using PAL, one of the HD formats etc ??
The reason I used Digital8 is just because that’s what I got and the difference between DV and Digital8 almost just matter of cassette size…
Pal is the european color format as NTSC is american and SECAM is used in a lot of countries in asia…
Thanks for all your comments
Jonas
Any rec for a BW camera ? I was hoping for a progressive CCD - at least 1/2″ or more..
What kind of crop factor does this give for 35mm lenses? Is it safe to assume it can obtain shallow dof too?
Thank for for this great article! I had given up on this.
I have all this trash in my garage, so I could put one of these together. if I have to explain why I would do this, you’ll never understand. Someone said it is the alchemist archetype/persona. hmmmm.
Awsome!
I have been looking at doing the same thing over the last 2 years.
They now have HD cameras that your able to use.
The HD cameras have 1/2 inch ccds and 1 inch ccds. The ccds are also progressive.
Look into it!
Good site! I’ll stay reading! Keep improving!
im really into film and video making but im a bit on the less fortunate side if ya know what i mean. My $100 camera just doesnt cut it audio wise and performs horribly in low light conditions. It does however have a/v input and takes sd cards up to 2 gb, and has a rechargeable battery replaceable with two AA batteries. So I was thinking use that as my recording device and find a higher quality capture device.
What are the alternatives to using security cameras in the $0-$200 price range?
i have a $100 aiptek camcorder that has a/v inout and i was wondering what alternatives do I have besides security cameras for an imaging device i the $100-$200 ish range?
Don’t discard the idea of using security cameras…
They do come in a wide variety of quality, usage, outputs(analog, firewire, usb) etc.
For 200$ you might find an industrial camera with 3ccd’s
or what ever is needed and connect it to a computer or some other recording device…
I have found some pretty good surveillance cameras, even some high-def ones, but I was wondering, what should I use as an LCD screen? That will be hard to come by…
Oh, and what specs should a good camera have for this camcorder?
How do you control settings like shutter speed and frame rate?
I may not be the admin, but you could build your own shutter: http://www.theshiveringearth.com/VC25PTechTSE.htm. Click on the circuit link, and it will explain it. It looks like a complicated circuit, though.
But, most likely, there is an onscreen menu on the surveillance monitor, or something. These are cctv cameras.
plz email me at [email deleted by admin]
is there a way i could use one of my computers hard drives to record video to
To “fred”
I deleted your email link from the comment to spare you from spam…
As you have signed up as a of Chaosprojects.com,
you’ll automaticly recive a mail when I post a new article or edit one of the existing.
To answer your question…
To my knowlegde there isn’t any 2,5″/3,5″ ide/sata to video adapter that’ll do the trick you want… sorry.