BEFORE

Client: Gravnetic Production, Inc. — www.gravnetic.com

[Jake Widman is a writer and editor who lives in San Francisco. He’s been covering the intersection of computers and graphic design for about 20 years now—since back when it was all called “desktop publishing.”]

Gravnetic provides multimedia content of all sorts, from streaming Flash videos for the Web to broadcast graphics for local TV stations to DVD material. Owner Jake Hawkes says he came up with the name by combining the words “magnetic” and “gravity”—the latter reflecting the fact that the Idaho-based company is frequently called upon to work with material involving skiing and mountain biking.

The biggest problem with the current website, says Hawkes, “is that I have two homepages—the initial one with the movie marquee, and then the Flash Video page.” The bare URL takes a visitor to the first page, even though the second page has all the navigation links on it and is even named “Home.” Not only that, the two pages don’t look anything alike; there isn’t even a consistent logo treatment tying them together. Ideally, Hawkes says, the first page would be a simple gateway that offers clear access to the other main areas of the site, although he wouldn’t mind visitors having direct access to the video player on the front page.

Overall, he’d like his site to look fun, colorful, and creative. Hawkes cites the well-known series of Sony Bravia commercials as examples of the combination of fun and creativity he admires. Another goal is for the website to encourage distribution, so that some of his videos could get viral exposure. He’d like there to be some kind of “call to action” after you look at his stuff—if people see something they like, they should be able to do something with it. “Perceive it however you will,” he says, “but then share it.” We asked three designers to take on the complicated task of providing consistency, creativity, and action in the same makeover.

AFTER

Designer: Tyler Thompson — www.workwithjob.com

My goal for the Gravnetic website was structuring the content in a way that would come across as approachable, professional, and creative, while finding a balanced mix of structural elements and visual consistency. Lack of consistency was foremost among the many ways I thought their current website falls short.

For the homepage, I wanted to keep the video area the main focus so I decided that giving access to five videos at a time was an ideal way to keep the user interested but wanting more. I added a little News section to help give the homepage a fresh feel and provide a reason for people to come back for updated information.

For the overall look of the site, my inspiration was to mix technology with the outdoors. I chose a subtle, natural color scheme and tried to mimic a pixelated forest treeline in the header. I really resisted getting too creative with background graphics and headers—I felt that their content was the creative element and that it should have a neutral stage to perform on.

I added the ability to share any video or picture to help people spread the word for Gravnetic. I chose to tie the headlines in to the header graphic by using a pixel font (Frucade Small Extended from Semplice), while the navigation and video player font (Interstate Bold Condensed) was chosen for its bold, compact form. I cleaned up Gravnetic’s logo by setting it in a sleek, modern font that I manipulated only slightly. I wanted the logo to be simple and strong, yet plain enough that they could impose it on their other work without it taking away from what they were applying it to.

ABOUT THE DESIGNER:

In late 2006 while working at 7-Eleven, Tyler Thompson found himself alone one night shift. While stocking the hot dogs, the layout of the packaging grabbed him, and he thought, “I can do better than this!” And so began a love story, a love story set in a world where hard drives are huge and floppy drives don’t exist.

In addition to campaigns for Safeway, Redhook, and others, Thompson has created a logo for his cousin’s softball team, a flyer for a rave, and two menus for a highly successful Mexican restaurant in town. Tyler would like to take this opportunity to thank his amazing wife, Amanda, for all of her support during his long, long nights behind the computer, and his son, Scout, for all his cool coyote sounds.

APPLICATIONS USED: Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator

AFTER

Designer: Taylor Zimmerman — www.xpdesigns.com

With the client’s personal background and preferences in mind, I opened Photoshop with a newfound vigor. I planned to keep some of the organizational and design choices; however, the lack of consistency and identity were the major items I wanted to change and enhance.

I began by using more modern design elements, adding gradients, bold colors, and glossy highlights to the first page. With the client’s wish for activity and the history of the Gravnetic name, I used a more traditional approach and gave the layout a mountainous landscape background.

I kept the magnet because it’s the client’s best representation of what his site is about. I manipulated it, however, and used it as the n of the logo to create a feeling of simplicity and boldness. I reproduced the new logo on the front page to add stronger identity and more uniformity. The selection of Lucida Sans Unicode and Myriad Pro as the fonts for the section titles and logo, respectively, adds an aura of professionalism.

Moving on to the video page, I focused on interactivity and simplicity. I converted each text-titled video to a simple glossy button organized on the right-hand side. To achieve a more distributive website, I included interactive sections to enable video exchange. I created an alternative video player with a more user-friendly interface and one that conformed to the sleek and traditional design of the layout.

ABOUT THE DESIGNER:

A Web designer for two and a half years, the 15-year-old Taylor Zimmerman is a sophomore in high school in Tennessee. While attending high school, he has created assorted graphics for his school and its many clubs. His work has also been featured in the Tennessee Art League.

Because his father was a member of the Armed Forces for 20 years, Taylor has lived in numerous places around the world. He began Web designing in 2005 and created his website, Xpdesigns, shortly after.

Taylor enjoys hanging out with his friends, freelance PHP and MySQL programming, and jamming to his favorite alternative rock band. He plans on attending the Art Institute of Chicago to obtain a degree in Audio Production, Graphic Design, and Interactive Media.

APPLICATIONS USED: Adobe Photoshop CS3

AFTER

Designer: John McCann — www.efuturemedia.com

The immediate need for the Gravnetic website was quite clear from the beginning: there was no continuity. The splash page was designed as a flashy theatre marquee, but the subsequent pages made you feel as if you were leaving the site altogether. Not only do they not look like the opening page, but they contain links to pages (Promo Reel, About, Contact) that aren’t even mentioned on the splash page.

I started by tackling the splash page. Unless your site is product-focused and your homepage is introducing a product, an image-based splash page isn’t a great idea. I wanted the homepage to present basic information on all of Gravnetic’s services, as well as give an idea of what can be expected on the rest of the site. Each content area is clearly defined and has a clear heading as to what belongs to that section. I included samples of photography, direct links to videos, and a list of services, and gave each listed service an identifying icon.

On the subsequent pages, clear content areas with clear headings again give users a very clear and concise method of accessing the content. And I reinforced each service page with the icon used for that service on the front page, so it’s very clear to viewers where they are on the site. I used Penumbra HalfSerif Std for the logo and section headings and various weights of Myriad Pro for everything else.

The overall look is based on the original theater theme. In the final product, the marquee and lights around it are animated to bring the site to life, but not too much to take away from the content. It’s important to remember that the content is what’s important, not so much the design.

ABOUT THE DESIGNER:

John McCann, 27, works at VanKomen Media (www.vankomenmedia.com), an online marketing firm based in Draper, Utah. VanKomen provides marketing services such as list management, media buying, and campaign management.

Before VanKomen, McCann worked on websites for companies doing business with HBO and the Discovery Channel. He has also worked on projects involving corporate customer relationship management and content management system design, as well as on sites designed to sell children’s toys.

McCann moved to Utah with his wife when she was in the Air Force; he says, “We absolutely love it. We used to live in Florida, so my four children, Ian, Ashton, Kyleigh, and Shealeigh, had never seen snow. They’re having the time of their lives.”

APPLICATIONS USED: Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Illustrator CS3

The vast majority of PostScript Type 1, TrueType, and OpenType (non-Pro) fonts don’t contain the numerator and denominator glyphs needed to make fractions. To make professional-looking fractions using these fonts, you have to scale and then position the numerals manually.

Virtually all fonts, though, contain three pre-built—or piece—fractions: ¼, ½, and ¾. These consist of a numerator and denominator that are scaled to about 60% of the size of regular numerals, and they flank a special character called a fraction bar. On a Windows PC, you can access them by holding down the Alt key while typing their ANSI encoding numbers: 0188 (¼), 0189 (½), or 0190 (¾). Apple never saw the wisdom of including these fractions in the basic Mac encoding scheme, so there’s no keyboard access for them on the Mac. You have to fetch them using OS X’s Character Palette (Edit>Special Characters) or an Adobe program’s Glyphs panel.

These piece fractions are a great convenience if they’re the only ones you’ll be using in a document. But if you need others as well, you’ll often find that it’s hard to get them to look the same, as you can see here.

Matching hand-built fractions (left) with pre-built, piece fractions (right) isn’t always possible: The Times fractions on top are almost identical but the Univers 55 piece fraction is noticeably bolder than its built equivalent, which is commonly the case.

If you have to use any of these piece fractions together with others, you’re often better building them all from scratch. That sounds worse than it is…because after you’ve built the first one for any particular typeface and point size, you can use it as a template to build others in a jiffy.

Finding the fraction bar The fraction bar ( ⁄ ) isn’t the same as the common solidus, or slash ( / ). For one thing, a fraction bar rests on the baseline (except in a handful of faces), so it bottom-aligns with the fraction’s denominator; however, a solidus extends below the baseline, where it typically bottom-aligns with a typeface’s descending characters. Another important aspect of the fraction bar is that it has special kerning characteristics so that numerators and denominators snuggle up against it more closely than they would with a solidus.

Finding the fraction bar on the Mac is easy, as it’s always been a part of the basic Mac character set: You’ll find it at Shift-Option-1. If you’re using Windows, it’s easier to find it using the Windows Character Map than using the Glyphs panel in InDesign or Illustrator, where you can’t search for a character by name, Unicode number, or glyph ID number. Nor do Adobe programs allow you to use a glyph’s Unicode number (in this case U+2044) to key in a code sequence to access a glyph. In the Windows Character Map (Start/All Programs), just type “fraction bar” in the Find field and the program will find it for you. Double-click the fraction bar to select it, click the Copy button, and then back in your program, paste it where you want it.

Fractions step by step

STEP ONE: To make a fraction in InDesign or Illustrator, first type the numerator, fraction bar, and denominator in a series without spaces.

STEP TWO: Drag a ruler guide down to top-align with the fraction bar. Now select the numerator and reduce its size to 60% of the size of the surrounding text (type “60%” in the Font Size field of the Character panel, and InDesign will do the math for you). Nudge it upward with the Baseline Shift control tool (in the Character panel) until the top of the numerator touches the ruler guide.

STEP THREE: Now scale the denominator to the same size.

STEP FOUR: At this point you’re close, but you’ll probably have to kern both the numerator and denominator a bit nearer to the fraction bar. Do this using your keyboard controls: Option-Right/Left Arrow (PC: Alt-Right/Left Arrow).

STEP FIVE: If you’re doing this in a magnified view (Zoom), it’s easy to over-kern. Remember that in text size, the numeral in a fraction is going to be very small—6 or 7 points—so print a proof to make sure that in kerning you haven’t crowded it too much against the fraction bar. Here’s our finished fraction.

Recycling your work To save this work for later use in InDesign, select the fraction and choose Export from the File menu. In the Export dialog, select Adobe InDesign Tagged Text from the Format (PC: Type) pop-up menu, give the file a name you’ll recognize, such as “one eighth,” and click the Save button.

Later, when you need it, you can use the Place command to bring this file back into a page, where it will appear in the correct fraction format. At that point, you can change the numerator and denominator as needed. (InDesign really needs a Library for saving complexly formatted text elements for future use.)

To save your fractions for later use when working in Illustrator, build them in a special file, from which you can cut-and-paste them into future documents—hardly an ideal system, but it works.

Note: When recycling fractions this way, if you change the typeface you’ll probably have to do some base-alignment and kerning tweaking. The sizes, though, should be okay unless the face you choose is bold or very light.

A quicker alternative There’s a faster way to make fractions with InDesign but it requires a little “bridge burning” by changing the specifications for how superscripts and subscripts are set. There’s not too much use of the latter (unless you write about CO2, for example), but superscripts are commonly used for footnotes.

If you don’t use either super- or subscripts, however, here’s the fix: Go to the Preferences>Advanced Type dialog and change the Size for both Superscript and Subscript to 60%. Now change the Position for Superscripts to 28% and for Subscripts to 1%. Click OK and from then on, you can just select a would-be fraction’s numeral, and in the Control panel, click on the Superscript or Subscript button to convert them to a numerator or denominator. Remember though that you’ll still have to tweak the kerning.

One problem with building your own fractions is that scaling down the numerals makes them a bit too light. Numerals intended for use in fractions—as in most piece fractions built into a font, or those used in OpenType Pro fonts—are made slightly bolder to make them more legible and more in harmony with the type around them. If you happen to be using a typeface family with a semibold weight, you might try using that weight for fractions within regular-weight type. Sometimes these appear a bit too bold, but often they’re preferable to fractions that are too wispy.

This past November, eight students and I traveled with VSP Workshops to Namibia, where we had the unique opportunity to photograph the Himba, an ethnic group living in the northern part of the country. One of our goals, in addition to taking candid and lifestyle shots, was to take a series of on-location portraits. In this column, I’ll share with you some of the photographs from that shoot, along with some of the specific goals we set for ourselves.

Make pictures, don’t just take pictures
Anyone can take pictures, but not everyone can make pictures. Making pictures is creative, fun, and easy. Rather than simply pointing your camera at a subject and pressing the shutter release button, take the time to carefully position your subject or subjects in a scene, as I did when I photographed these two Himba women posed against a clear sky.

Work with a subject on his or her pose and expression. Create a balanced photograph. Watch the background. Choose the best f-stop for the appropriate depth-of-field, and the best shutter speed to either stop or blur action. Work—and play—at making pictures and you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment when you see the results of your effort.

Fall in love
For me, the key to getting a good on-location portrait is to fall in love—photographically—with the subject. That’s exactly what I did when I saw this young woman. Out of the 50 or so people who lived in this particular village, she caught my eye immediately. It was photographic love at first site.

So, the first tip is to find a subject that you absolutely must photograph, someone who moves you to say, “I’ll do anything to get that person’s picture for myself and to share with others.”

The camera looks both ways
One of my favorite photography adages is that the camera looks both ways—in picturing the subject, you’re also picturing a part of yourself. When you keep in mind that the energy, emotion, and feeling that you project will be reflected in your subject’s face, especially the eyes, and you’ll get a high percentage of pictures that you like. I’m sure you can tell how I was feeling when I took this photograph.

Take three
When taking headshots, take a head-on photograph, a profile, and a three-quarter’s view (as illustrated by the opening photo and the two previous photos). Photographing a subject from different angles gives you an assortment from which to choose your favorite.

Capture a natural moment
To capture a natural moment, you need to establish a sense of trust with your subject. That takes time—time you need to spend talking to subject, learning about her life, sharing information about your life, and why you’re there taking pictures.

Perhaps the most important part of establishing a sense of trust is to find a guide who has previously visited the location and who has already gained the trust of the people, as our group did with the Himbas.

Frame it
When you put a print in a frame, you basically dress up and enhance the picture so the frame complements the photograph. On site, you can frame a subject with a doorway, window frame, tree branches, or a fence. The frame must complement the subject. Framing a subject can also add depth to the scene, helping to create a 3D effect in a 2D image.

See and control the light
Seeing the light—the contrast, shadows, and highlights—in a scene is the first step in getting the best possible in-camera picture. The second step is knowing how to capture and control the light, either by using a flash, reflector, diffuser, or by moving the subject into the shade.

This little Himba girl’s face was partially shaded by her hair. To fill in the shadows, I used a flash for daylight fill-in flash photography. The picture doesn’t look like a flash picture (my goal with all my flash pictures) because I dialed down the output of the flash, which balanced the light from the flash to the ambient light.

For the trio of tight headshots of the beautiful young woman pictured earlier in the column, I had a student hold a gold reflector so the sunlight (which was over and behind the woman’s hut) was bounced back onto the subject. That’s why the pictures of the subject positioned in the dark shade look so bright and colorful. Without the reflector, the pictures would have looked dull and flat. So don’t leave home without a reflector, diffuser, or a flash. And keep an eye on the light.

Go interactive
When you share your pictures with your subjects, you make photo sessions more fun and interactive. After all, who doesn’t like seeing their pictures? That’s especially true for the Himba, who live in a relatively remote part of Namibia. Share your pictures, and you’ll see how easy it is to make new friends.

Here are two examples from my countless photo sessions around the planet, one from an adventure to Mongolia, and one from a photo workshop I led in Kenya.

Meanderings in Mongolia
I took the opening image for this article in Mongolia where I photographed the nomad in his ger (tent-like hut) on my first day there. It’s one of my favorite nomad pictures from the adventure and it was the last shot in the evolution of a photo shoot. Unlike the following pictures from that shoot, it’s a flash picture (I bounced the light off the ceiling of the ger for soft and even lighting), because I didn’t like the high-contrast range created by the light coming through an opening in the ger’s ceiling and through the open door. Read on to see how the session began.

Here’s my first shot. My friend, Jack, and I were welcomed into the ger by the man’s family and then invited to drink fermented camel’s milk (a local custom to which you can’t say “no”). I saw a potential picture but the light coming through the opening in the ger’s ceiling caused the table to be way overexposed…but I took my test shot anyway.

I never like to overstay my welcome because it can make the subject feel uncomfortable. So, rather than start right away photographing the man, I asked our guide to move into position for a test shot. I liked the composition, especially with the clock in the picture, but I could see that the contrast range was still too great.

Almost happy with my picture, I asked our host to move into position, and he gladly accommodated my request. I played around with exposures but I couldn’t get the man and the table evenly exposed, so I knew I needed to use a flash for even illumination.

The “keeper” you see at the beginning of this column is the result of this photo session (which lasted about 15 minutes, as you can tell from the clock). You may notice that the man is now wearing traditional nomad clothes and boots—changing his clothes was his idea. He thoroughly enjoyed the photo session, according to our guide, who also acted as our translator.

In case you’re wondering what a ger looks like from the outside, here you go. And if you were wondering what fermented camel’s milk tastes (and smells) like, try this: Take a cup of milk, leave it in the hot sun for two days, and then force yourself to drink it with a smile!

Let’s travel to Kenya
This is the picture I envisioned when I saw this young girl in a Massai village in Kenya. When I see a subject I want to photograph, that envisioning process helps me get the shot. I ask myself, “If I had room on my memory card for only one shot, what would it be?” In this situation, I wanted to picture the girl against a black background, which was easily created by posing her in front of the doorway to her hut.

But she and I were strangers and spoke difference languages. I couldn’t simply walk up to her and ask if I could take her picture. That would have been very awkward, especially because I wanted to work close and get a head-and-shoulder shot. So, working with my guide, through whom I asked the girl about her daily life, I started shooting from a distance—pictures that I knew would be outtakes. I showed the girl her pictures, thereby developing a relationship with her.

As I gained her confidence and she became more comfortable and relaxed, I moved in closer. I kept shooting and then showing her the pictures on my camera’s LCD monitor. She was thrilled to see the pictures just seconds after I’d taken them.

Here are two of the dozens of outtakes from that photo session. One is a full-length shot with bad lighting and a bad pose and the other shows the girl with her eyes closed— indicating that I missed the shot.

I’ll end this article with one of my photo philosophies that sums up the evolution of a photo-session process: There’s a big difference between taking a picture and making a picture. I made this picture by asking this young Massai boy to pose in the doorway of a hut (a different hut). I asked one of my friends to hold a gold reflector so that the light from the sun bounced onto my subject, who was positioned in the deep shade. The reflector illuminated the subject with a beautiful warm light and also added contrast to the photograph.

I share these images with you not only to illustrate the evolution of one of my photo sessions but also to encourage you to keep shooting, even if you think you’ve already taken a good photograph. If you keep in mind that a photo session is an evolving process, you’ll not only have a better chance of getting the shot you want, you won’t be frustrated if you don’t get your keeper with your first shot.

What does this all mean? I had a chance to sit down with Deeje Cooley, who serves as an evangelist for Adobe’s Dynamic Media Organization (and formerly as the product manager for the Adobe Media Player). Cooley was tasked with bringing the product to market and he shared insight into Adobe’s motivation for the product and goals for its role in the market. Unlike competing products, the Adobe Media Player has chosen to focus on being a video-only player.

“With the growth of video online, and the dramatic growth of Flash as the video delivery mechanism of choice…there was a ripe opportunity to take advantage of all these events around the industry,” said Cooley. “We started to build an RSS aggregator and quickly recognized that video was going to be a significant media online and so it became a video RSS aggregator. And so that’s really the birth of the Adobe Media Player.”

TV Comes to the Web
Adobe has been tracking the trend of TV moving online. Many users want their TV delivered to them on demand rather then having to wait for it or searching online. One way to meet this demand is RSS, which allows for video content to be indexed, searched, and subscribed to. Many media outlets from news websites to iTunes use RSS to allow content to be delivered with convenience.

“RSS is akin to having a magazine delivered to your doorstep on a weekly basis. The team was really fascinated with RSS and we started to educate internally around the company that RSS was something significant. We also started noticing some other trends going on in the industry. One was in the TV space—the growth of DVRs and video on demand services hitting 20 percent in 2007,” said Cooley. “Adobe Media Player is fundamentally a video RSS aggregator.”

While the Adobe Media Player is a great vehicle for delivering content from traditional television networks like CBS, HGTV, and MTV, it goes much deeper. The media player ships with content from podcasting networks such as blip.tv, ON Networks, Podango, and Revision3. Thanks to the RSS technology, those participating in video podcasting can easily add the Adobe Media Player as an outlet.

“I’m thrilled to say that Adobe Media Player is based on standards around RSS 2.0, Atom 1.0, the media RSS extensions first promoted by Yahoo. So if you have a standard spaced RSS feed…it’s likely to play in the Adobe Media Player,” said Cooley. “We’ve been working very closely with the ecosystem of video publishing, starting with the video management systems…making sure that those RSS feeds are compatible with the Adobe Media, then making sure that their consoles have support for defining the branding assets that create a unique experience in Adobe Media Player.”

It’s the branding assets that are a standout feature of the Adobe Media Player. Content producers can harness features like banner branding bars, custom backgrounds, and network logos. The goal here is to make it easier for content creators to brand and market their content.

“The key difference for Adobe Media player over other aggregators is that it’s specifically designed with the business of content in mind. So if you’re a content creator or a podcast creator, it has mechanisms to provide dynamic branding around your content. This is both a benefit to you, as well as your audience, to really know what context they’re in, and also have dynamic advertising built in,” said Cooley. “If you want to do layouts, you have complete control over that through an XML file.”

Next Generation User Data

The player will also support next-generation tools for targeting audiences, including viewer-centric dynamic advertising and anonymous measurement of content usage, such as when and how often a video has been viewed. Another important factor is the Adobe Media Player’s support for protected streaming, advertising protection, and video DRM protection.

“If you want to do measurement to understand not only how many people are downloading your episodes, but how many are actually watching them, what time of day, how often they are launching it—things like that, the Adobe Media Player has a measurement engine built in,” said Cooley “It’s designed to measure the content, not the viewer, so it doesn’t tell you anything personally identifiable about your audience, but it does tell you what aggregates, how often and how much of your content is being consumed.”

Cooley said that Adobe recognizes the need for balance in serving both content creators and consumers. This includes the ability for both parties to control the measurement tools. Consumers can access the Options area of the Media Player then choose the Privacy preferences (by default the application will measure media usage anonymously).

“The end user can disable the measurement engine, but the corollary is that as a content owner, you can require the measurement engine to be on. So if you really need that measurement to make your business work, you can enable that. So we think it’s the right balance. If end users want to turn it off, they will be limited to content that doesn’t require the measurement engine. It’s a lot like JavaScript in the browser. If you want to turn that off for privacy rights, you can. Some sites just won’t work unless that engine is on,” said Cooley.

Then there’s this problem: At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, the major camera companies announce new models of consumer video cameras. This makes many who bought cameras during the holidays feel like they should have waited. What they don’t tell you is that most of these new models won’t be available in retail stores until the summer months. They’re just trying to build up some hype and momentum before they send early release models to the various publications to get reviewed.

So what’s a person supposed to do who wants a great video camera now? Today. Right this very moment! Well, the best thing is to look for cameras that have been on the market at least three months and have been tested by both professional reviewers and by your average everyday consumer in forum posts and on sites, such as Amazon.com.

What? You don’t have time to look through the hundreds of models, and then read the thousands of reviews, blog postings, and forum comments to whittle down your options? Then take a look at my following picks for the video cameras that deliver the best bang for the buck. The best part is that you can go out and buy these cameras today. I’ve broken them up in five price categories based on price.

BEST CAMCORDER UNDER $200
I know, it sounds crazy. Can you really find a good DV camera for less than what it will cost to buy a good external drive to edit the footage on? The answer is, yes! The Canon ZR800 miniDV Camcorder comes with a variety of features, including 35x optical zoom, image stabilizer, 16:9 widescreen capability, and an external mic jack—something you can’t get on some camcorders costing two to three times as much. This is the perfect camera to leave in your car’s glove box to catch those unexpected family moments or to document an accident just after it happens.

Over at Amazon.com, some of the commenters complain about the motor noise this camera makes, but believe me, for an average street price of around $175, you’ll notice the money you still have left in your wallet more than the motor noise. And with the built-in mic jack, you can go to Radio Shack and pick up a $20–$40 lavalier mic, pin it to your kid’s jersey, and get an “on-the-field report” after his team’s winning soccer match that will make him feel like he’s on ESPN and make him sound almost as good.

Now don’t expect this camera to be as good as my next pick in the under $500 category. Remember, that camera costs more than twice as much! The Canon ZR800 is missing the ability to take pictures and does poorly recording video in low-light situations. But for the money, and for the fact that you can go to online stores such as B&H (www.bhphotovideo.com ) and get free shipping and a free training DVD on how to shoot and produce better videos, the Canon ZR800 is a steal. [For more information, visit www.usa.canon.com/consumer.]

Note: The Canon ZR900 miniDV Camcorder should be available by the time you read this but I haven’t had a chance to test it yet. The new model should retail for around $250.

BEST CAMCORDER UNDER $500
Sure, HD cameras and those that record direct to hard disk are all the rage in the media these days, but those aren’t the ones the average family man is looking to buy. In fact, everyone I talked to over the holidays had the same thing in common: They all wanted to buy the best camera they could get for less than $500. That seems to be everyone’s magic price point. They don’t need the latest technology or the newest format; they just want the best bang for the buck!

So here’s my pick: the Sony DCR-HC96 MiniDV Handycam Camcorder, with 10x optical/120x digital zoom, 3.3-megapixel CCD, color viewfinder, and 2.7″ Touch Panel LCD screen. Surprisingly, this is a one-chip (CCD) camera, which means that I usually wouldn’t recommend it (preferring to encourage people to spend a little more for a three-chip camera). However, in test after test this camera does better in low-light situations than most three-chip cameras costing a couple hundred dollars more. This is mainly due to the fact that the one chip in this camera is twice as big as the chips in the other cameras. So you’re getting better quality at a lower price!

This camera also has the distinction of being able to pass analog video through the camera’s FireWire port directly into your computer. This means you can hook up your VCR or old Hi8 camera to the Sony DCR-HC96 and digitize all of your old media with ease. It’s like getting an analog-to-digital converter for free. And the best part is that it has an average street price $479. [For more information, visit www.sonystyle.com.]

BEST CONSUMER HD CAMCORDER UNDER $1,000
So now that I’ve made my picks for the best camcorders less than $200 and less than $500, we can move onto the category that gets all of the media attention these days: Best Consumer HD Camcorder. You’d think that with all of the choices available and with all of the advertising that has gone into marketing camcorders in this category that this would have been a tough decision for me—but it wasn’t. So this time I’m not only going to tell you which one I picked as a winner, but also which ones I didn’t pick and why.

For me, the winner in this category is the Canon VIXIA HV20 HDV Camcorder, which captures images in the larger HD resolution of 1920×1080 onto a miniDV or miniHDV tape. It uses a 1/2.7″ CMOS sensor chip to capture those images, which tends to process faster than the more standard CCD chip found in a lot of cameras. In this price category, it also tends to capture richer color and sharper detail than its competitors. But my favorite feature is that it can capture footage at the movie film rate of 24p, something that’s practically unheard of at the $750 street price that this camera regularly sells for. (Quick Tip: Turn on the camera’s Cinema Mode when capturing in 24p if you want to try to achieve a more film-like look to your video footage.)

The HV20 also has an HDMI output so you can hook it up directly to your new HDTV, and it has an optical image stabilizer to get you smoother results when you zoom in using the 10x optical zoom. A 3.1-megapixel still camera that records images to a mini-SD card rounds out the cool features found in this camera. I’m a little disappointed that it doesn’t do better in low-light situations (this is where three-chip CCD cameras usually do better), but for the money this is one incredible camera. And speaking of money, a number of online stores are currently offering gift cards or rebates of $75 on this camera, which cuts the effective price down to $675. That means that you can get an HD camcorder for only $175 more than my miniDV camcorder pick. [For more information, visit www.usa.canon.com/consumer.]

The contenders
I like the Sony HDR-CX7 ($1,099; street price around $850) and the Panasonic HDC-SD1 ($800) because they both record to solid state memory based cards, similar to your digital still camera (the Sony uses Memory Stick PRO Duo cards and the Panasonic uses SD cards). I really feel that this is the way all video recording is going in the near future—away from tape capture and recording directly to a digital file. In fact, the Sony HDR-SR7 ($1,399; street price around $1,200) is a good choice if you want a camera that has a 60-GB hard drive built into it. But the problem with all of these cameras is that they record to the AVCHD format, which is a highly compressed format and is, quite frankly, a real pain to try to edit.

On the Mac, you can use any of Apple’s software (iMovie 08, Final Cut Express 4, or Final Cut Pro 6.0.2) to edit your files, but you’ll find that all three of the programs transcode the AVCHD format into the Apple Intermediate Codec (AIC). This means that your 4 GBs worth of AVCHD video files quickly turn into 40 GBs of crowded editing footage on your hard drive. And on the PC, the only decent AVCHD editing solution is the pro-level Sony Vegas application (retail $585), which costs almost as much as the cameras. All in all, I’m just not sold on the AVCHD format yet.

BEST PRO-LEVEL HD CAMERA UNDER $3,500
So now let’s look at the more professional-level HD cameras costing less than $3,500. These cameras are near and dear to the working professional in the commercial, corporate, educational, and wedding fields, among others. The winner for me in this category is the Canon XH A1, which is an amazing piece of engineering for a remarkable price.

At just more than $3,000 (with rebate), the XH A1 camcorder has three 1/3″ 16:9 interlaced CCDs that capture images at 1080i resolution. The camcorder features selectable frame rates of 60i, 30F, and 24F. This allows you to capture sports at 30 frames or a more film-like look at the 24 frame rate. The 60i frame rate is the current resolution of choice for many reality TV shows.

I really like the great lens, optical stabilizer, and super-fast focus that come standard with this camera. At this price point you’re not able to change out the lens for another, but the 20x Professional L Series Fluorite fixed lens that the XH A1 ships with provides excellent image fidelity. My only complaint is with the onboard mic. You can easily triple the audio quality that this camera records by buying a decent shotgun mic ($500) and attaching it to the included shotgun mount. All in all, a fantastic camera for the price. [For more information, visit www.usa.canon.com/consumer.]

BEST PRO-LEVEL HD CAMERA OVER $3,500
Now this is the category where we pull out all the stops and look for the best of the best—but please don’t take that to mean that I’m including the $75,000 VariCam setup for the next great Hollywood cinematographer. I’m actually just focusing on those cameras less than $10,000 that still deliver a great bang for the buck and also offer a little something extra. And with these criteria, the choice was easy.

Arguably the hottest camera on the market today is the Panasonic AG-HVX200. Every pro I know either already has one or is getting one in the near future. Even podcasters are scooping these up in quantity. My friends over at Photoshop User TV (www.photoshopusertv.com) already have two of these units, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they picked up two or three more before the end of the year. The guys over at DJ TV (www.digitaljuice.com/djtv) also swear by them.

So what’s all the fuss about? Well, the camera is compatible with DVCPRO HD, DVCPRO 50, DVCPRO 25, and consumer DV recording standards. It also uses three wide aspect CCDs for true 16:9 recordings. It even comes with a wide-angle Leica Dicomar HD 13x zoom lens with advanced glass coatings. But the most significant reason it stands out from the pack is that it uses Panasonic’s new P2 memory cards for recording. This disk-based recording medium makes the video immediately accessible to nonlinear editing systems (such as Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, etc.) and forever leaves behind the boring task of digitizing video footage from tape.

But this editing ease and technology innovation doesn’t come cheap. While you can get a camera for around $5,200, by the time you add a couple of extra P2 cards and an accessory or two, you’ve easily spent your $8,000 budget in one fell swoop. Ahhh, but as many happy users are eager to tell you, it’s totally worth it. [For more information, visit www.panasonic.com/business/provideo/cat_camcorders.asp.]

Bio
Rod Harlan is a video industry veteran and founder of the Digital Video Professionals Association. Through his company DriveDV Inc., Rod works on special projects for Fortune 500 clients such as Adobe and private institutions such as the NAPP. His popular industry blog is packed with tips, tutorials, and industry insight and can be found at DVconfidential.com.