Get a DV cam and a Macintosh.

Sean’s note: The first thing you have to figure out is what type of video you want to do — if you’re interested in podcasting, you can get by with a much more minimal setup on both the hardware and software end, but if your goal is to do high-quality projects for possible theatrical release (either short films or full-length), then you’ll definitely want to pay more attention to getting quality components.

As far as the camera goes, you want a modern camera with a FireWire connection to the PC. Despite the advent of DVD and hard-drive based cameras, I’m still a big fan of MiniDV cameras: it’s easy to transfer the footage to the PC, you can get high defintion quality on MiniDV tapes, and it’s easy to swap them out when you’ve used up the tape. If the goal is to edit up your footage, DVD camcorders aren’t ideal as it’s sometimes difficult to bring your footage into the editing program of your choice. And with hard drive camcorders, once you’ve used up your available hard drive space you have to start deleting content from the drive, or spend time transferring it off the drive…and if the drive fails, you have to send the camera to the shop. I’d also suggest making sure that you’re getting a camera that will record in native 16:9 mode, even if you’re planning to record in standard definition resolution…it’s the standard aspect ratio of almost all screens being made these days, and you want to make sure you have a camera that’s capable of shooting for those screens.

As far as the editing software is concerned, you can accomplish a lot in fairly basic editing packages, like Adobe’s Premiere Elements, iMovie…and even Window Movie Maker (if you must). If you’re planning to step up and do more professional-level stuff, you almost certainly want to look at Final Cut Pro if you’re on a Mac, or Adobe Premiere Pro if you’re on a PC. I personally think Final Cut is a lot easier to use than Premiere, but it’s really a matter of personal preference…take a look at both options in the store if you can, to see which one appeals to you more…it’s a lot of money to blow on software so you want to be sure you will be comfortable with the software.