Replying to What Camera?

Hey Guys,

I know there are other threads about this but i saw the one about questions to answer so I thought I would make my own thread with my specific answers.

1) What is your budget? How much money can you spend right away, and do you think you can get more money to invest in the future?

I'm not looking to spend more than maybe $500. Seeing I am a freshman in high school I do believe I will have more money to invest later on.

2) What experience do you already have with cameras? Have you ever even used one before? Have you helped your friend out with his camera? Have you owned your own?

I have almost no experience with cameras. I want to get involved in filming and editing so I can put together some edits of me and my crew skiing. I have used really simple cameras before a few times but I would consider myself a serious novice.

3) What gear, if any, do you currently have? (tripod, old camera lenses, mics, etc)

I own no gear for cameras what so ever.

4) What are you planning to shoot and how do you want to use your camera? Are you going to use this with the sole purpose of shooting skiing? or do you think you might try other stuff as well (movies, documentaries, short films, etc)

I plan on just using this camera to shoot skiing and possibly other action sports i.e. bmx, mtn. biking, water skiing, and wake boarding.

5) Do you want a camera that you can hand to your friends, that could or could not have film experience, and let them shoot you? or will you be doing all the filming?

This is very important I need to be able to hand this off to my friends and be sure they can get at least a decent shot of me with it. I plan on basically making a season edit of me and my cousin and maybe one or two other skiers/boarders, but I will be featured a lot in it so I need to have some one else be able to film with it.



6) When filming skiing, how do you tend to shoot? (follow cams, leave it on record on a tripod and hike, film from a tripod, etc)

I think I'll be doing a lot of follow cams and some free hand shooting and possible some tripod stuff if I can buy one.

7) What computer do you currently have/use to edit (if not currently editing, what would you most likely use)? If you can provide specifics, such as hard drive space, RAM, processor size, that would be great.

I will be using a MacBook Pro 13" 2.4ghz with 4gb memory and 250gb hard drive. I might be adding more RAM.

7) What program do you currently edit on? How familiar are you with it (1- just learning; 10- I can make tutorials and know the keyboard layout)

I don't know what editing software I will be using yet. If you could recommend one as well that would be great.

Thank you for any help and positive response will receive karma.