Digital Camcorders

[Chris Jenkins]

I figure most of us here now have a digitial camera. How many of us have the camcorder?

I'm thinking of getting into a medium to lightweight unit. From what I can gather that is something in the price range of 200 - 450.

Right now the focus of it is to record just fun times with the wife when we are out and about. I think it would be cool to do some stuff in the shop too!

I have a whole artillery of PC junk so their is no need to get the DVD burner in the unit.

Does anyone have any pointers on where I can get myself started here?

[Dennis Peacock]

Well Chris,

As soon as you figure it all out? Let me know since my head hurts every time I have to research the best camcorder and such. We have an old mini-VHS unit, but it needs new batteries, and the tapes are extremely hard to find any more. I'd like to find something that is more in line with digital camcorders so I can dump to my pc and burn it to a dvd.

Good luck.

[Chris Jenkins]

Dennis,

I know you can spend weeks on something like this comparing makes and models. Right now I am looking at Canon, as I am really happy with my canon digital camera. I am also looking at Sony.

Many PC's have DVD burners in them these days so their is no reason for me to go with the DVD recording built into the camcorder itself.

I know you can still get some units that have a cassette in them, but I can pretty much skip this as I don't even own a VHS player for years now.

Right now without getting into the high definition recroders or units with hard drives built into them it looks like they run about 250 - 350. This is a price I can justify on an item that I don't plan on using constantly.

If you have done a lot of recording of stuff in the past you may want to look into the units with the hard drives as you can record a lot more.

[Jeffrey Fusaro]

i use these two sites when i am looking for any new digital/photo toy...

http://www.epinions.com/

and

http://www.pricegrabber.com/

both have reviews and specs, etc...

here are three camera/video stores with great sites...

http://www.bhphotovideo.com

http://www.beachcamera.com

http://www.adorama.com/

i ended up getting a panasonic pv-gs series.

it's been a good recorder, so far. the reviews ranked it pretty high, for it's price range ~$300-$400.

[Ben Grunow]

I have a Nikon digital camera that takes phots and movies. It will take 125 pics or about 30 min of film on a card. Seems like the best solution for me is to get more cards if I need more pics/movies. I think a memory card is less than $100 and I only have to carry one unit. My .02

[Jim Becker]

I opted to go with a better camcorder when I bought one a couple years ago. I bought a Sony HC-90...I don't know what the current equivalent model is...and have really enjoyed it. I wanted good optics; accomodation for low-light and also wanted 16:9 aspect ratio capablity. (The last one was a personal desire given that the present and future in video is more "movie like")

The good news is that just like with digi-cams, digi-vid-cams are moving features from the high end down into the mid-range products, so you shuld be able to find something with nice capablities. Check the review sites and look at things like battery life and low-light. Both of these will affect how well you can use your camera to record "fun times" in a variety of settings.

[Allen Prell]

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/ has a lot of good information. That said, I have the Canon S3 IS (http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelDetailAct&fcategoryid=144&modelid=13077) digital camera which works out the best for me. It takes great photos and decent digital video all in one device. The camera was designed for video with a dedicated start/stop record button and stereo microphones. In addition, the zoom and image stabilization work while taking video. This was a good compromise until the HD digital video cameras come down in price.