Buying a Camcorder

[NeedMoreFans]

I figured this is as good of a place as any to ask about this...

 

My wife and I are planning on taking some of my birthday money and our Christmas money to buy a camcorder. We don't need something that fancy, and am trying to stay under $500. I've looked into the different formats available...miniDV, Digital8, DVD-RW, Hard Drive, and Flash/memory card. I think I've ruled out DVD-RW and Digital8. I like the idea of not having a tape, so I'm pretty much ruling out miniDV, too...which leaves hard drive and flash. Of all of the formats, which does everyone think is best? If this helps, I would like to edit videos on my computer, and burn them to DVD. I also want something that will make it easy to upload videos to YouTube and to blogs (I'm going to video journal our next vacation, and may upload them to a blog). We will use it to video tape social gatherings, vacations, and our future children (and current nephews).

[Fatter than Joey]

Hey man --

 

I was in a situation much like yours before my son started FB. I wanted a camera so I could record games and send them to the grandparents

 

I stumbled on a JVC Everio for $149 in Wal-Mart -- they are usually priced at ~$400. It has been a blast to have and use. I would STRONGLY recommend checking one of these out. It has a 30 GB HDD so I can record 8-10 games before I have to worry about archiving games. I bought a bigger battery for ~60$ and yesterday I recorded 4 BKB games w/o running out of juice.

 

One Sat. morning I put together the below video of the boy's FB highlights -- It took me about 2 hrs, and I have never put a video together. The camera zooms in very well, and records in HD, the youtube video doesnt do it justice when you see it on the TV.

 

Hope this helps.

 

[pogokat]

We just got a canon with an sd card slot...it's about the size of my fist, and because of the card slot you could conceivably record 10+ hours straight if you wanted to...haven't gotten a chance to see it on a tv yet, but the zoom and ease of use are great...i've owned several canon camera's in the past and i've been very pleased

 

to back up FTJ as well, i've had a minidv JVC for about 9 years and it's been great as well....i think you are making a wise decision by not buying a camera that uses tape as the transfer to computer can be more frustrating

[whizkid]

Yeah, I've been looking also to replace my old 8mm analog camcorder. The long HDD record time/convenience was appealing when I first started looking but from what I've read miniDV has the best video quality for standard defintion. I'm pretty fussy about that so I'm going to go with the miniDV, probably something in the Canon ZR series which are very reasonable. The tape serves as the archive and from what I've read tapes will last a lot longer than DVDs will physically. The big question with all these formats, even DVD & VHS, is how long there will be devices to play them on. I have a capture device to capture my 8mm tapes that start in 1991 but haven't gotten around to transferring them to dvd. When I do, I'll probably also transfer them to miniDV.

 

An HD 30GB HDD for $149 FTJ? Are you sure it's really HD or wasn't stolen merchandise? Normally that would be at least over $600 even at Walmart.

[greeg35]

I just bought this guy, waiting on delivery.

 

canon camcorder