Lebanon

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t like film cameras. For example, George Lucas shot "Attack of the Clones" with Sony HDW-F900 HDCAM camcorders outfitted with high-end Panavision lenses. These camcorders can shoot conventional 30-frame interlaced footage, but you can also set them to shoot 24 frames per second, just like film cameras. On this setting, the camera can shoot progressive video -- video made up of complete frames instead of interlaced fields. The camera also has a similar light range and depth of field to film cameras.
These professional digital camcorders work on the same basic idea as cheaper consumer models. They use charge-coupled devices (CCDs) to convert the incoming light from a scene into an electronic signal, and an analog-to-digital converter to turn this signal into a stream of 1s and 0s. (See How Camcorders Work for details.)
Other than frame rate, the main difference between a professional camcorder and a consumer model is image quality. Professional camcorders use higher-resolution CCDs to pick up more information fr...