well some good news and some bad news guys. Thanks to a couple of members i was able to reach the original target and went into town today to test drive the cameras. thats the good news. Now the bad. i was able to test all the Hd camcorders in my price range in the shop. i was able to test the ones i have enough money for:
HITACHI DZ-BD70E
TOSHIBA GSC-K80E
TOSHIBA GSC-K40HE
& the PANASONIC HDC-SD9EB-S which was also just above my budget
the tests were not good. i could easily see why these were so cheap. in low light conditions they didn't cope well at all. the video noise evident when taken in a brightly lit shop was almost unusable. they all seemed to suffer with the same problems too which was focusing. any sudden zoom and they all cracked up and took ages to focus. Now i became depressed. Is this how all low end camcorders will perform. Then there was one more camera i wanted to test which was the CANON HG20. unfortunately this was just under £600 but i wanted to test out a canon. OMG this camera is amazing. it has all the features that would make this possible. in low light it was superb with minimal video noise in dark areas. the cine mode looked great. add some grain and it could pass easily and match the original footage without problems. there was also another camcorder which was £50 cheaper and that was the SONY HDR-SR10, which was originally £750 but on special offer. this camera, although the quality was pretty good suffered with quite a few problems most noticeably that it desaturated reds and turned them pink. not good. the colouring was terrible.
i know i got excited when i saw that i had reached the target but became quickly depressed when seeing the cameras that online reviews said were great. they weren't. but the HG20 is.
i'm going to see if i can somehow find the extra money needed but in the mean time i need to keep the donations open. the canon camera will enable me to do so much more. It is going to be perfect to film model elements for the whole rest of the saga including the PT which any footage will fit seemlessly. i hope everyone isn't mad at me for doing this but this really has to be done right and i just couldn't with the low end cameras especially when trying to film dark areas like the inside of the slugs mouth and fast moving ships.i guess i'm just too much of a perfectionist. lol