Davin’s comment on the post below deserves to be elevated to its own post:

I will throw some gas on the fire. If you are willing to use video footage from point and shoot cameras online, I am not sure you need the high end, $4,000 camera at all. We have a pair of Canon XL2s in our newsroom and they are only rarely used. Even our most experienced shooters (including one fella with broadcast TV experience) favor our Casio Z850 cameras. They are quicker (no lengthy capturing process) and they have as good image as the Canon (once you compress the footage.)

It’s nice to have the Canon for long distance shots or internal video production. But for day-in-day-out use, we don’t need them.

As for reliability, we have used Sony and Casio consumer grade (point and shoot!) cameras for the past year without a single problem. To give you perspective how often they are used, we have shot 600+ videos this past year using those cameras.

In my own prejudiced view, there are few in any newspaper sites doing better video than Bakersfield. That said, I wouldn’t want to have a newsroom of that size or larger without at least one $4,000 camera (plus required accessories). Things just come up … and those cameras should get used, because eventually quality will matter more than it is now. A point-and-shoot looks a little silly mounted on a tripod, you know.