brianhaddad's: Family Video Fun

For frame capture of stopmotion animation. To be coupled with a set, characters and software for assembling the animation.

The family could have SO much fun with stuff like this.

Create stop-motion animation!
Frames is the premier tool for turning images into animated movies. Students can create stop-motion animated stories using pictures of clay characters they make, stop-motion pictures from a DV or USB camera, pictures they have taken with a digital camera, or pictures they have draw or painted in Twist, Pixie, or ImageBlender.
Movies can be saved as QuickTime, AVI, and Animated GIF for use online, in multimedia presentations, or for inclusion in other video productions.

This coupled with an inexpensive, mountable webcam or USB camera would be tons of fun for the kids.

Inexpensive, but a good camera that works almost as well as the more expensive models.

Fun for me and for the kids.

The Focus FS-5 is the new, lighter, and more portable disk recorder with a color screen featuring the next generation of Direct to Edit technology. DTE lets you bring your captured files directly from the FS-5 into your computer and begin editing. No messy file conversions or re-compressing is required. With FS-5, Focus takes DTE beyond simple file transfers into workflow productivity improvements using metadata that will allow you to edit faster and better.

Rugged, compact and versatile for great video sound: The MKE 400 is a small shot gun microphone for cameras with a lighting shoe mount and external microphone input.

Yes, I know it's expensive. It's a great camera though.

The price is for the hardwired version, which is fine for studio recording. The wireless version would require a transmitter, but would cost about the same (if not a few dollars less).