Camcorder's

[OrangeChipper]

Looking to get this for my wife from my 1 year old son for Xmas.

She loves the Canon Digital camera. So Canon is likely what I want.

Just wanting advice on what's better out there. The ones with big hard-drive's or the one's that record straight onto DVD's.

Eventually we'd make DVD's out of them anyways, but I'm not sure how the hard-drive's work. ARe they easy to turn into DVD's on the computer? Are they higher quality??

Any input appreciated.

 

[HornBud]

I ruled out the dvd option when I was looking, seemed too fragile and I didn't want to worry about scratches and the like.

Do they not offer a flash drive option? I try to avoid moving parts when I can. It should be fairly easy to transfer from either a hard drive or a flash drive. Does your computer have a fire wire port? That's your best option for speed and quality.

Do you already have movie making software? If not, I recommend the offering from Adobe. I was able to convert all of the clips from my one year old into a movie rather easily with it. Sent the DVD to his grandma who lived 14 hours away and didn't get to see his first year. Oh yeah, I stole Christmas without even being there ;-)

 

[brntorng]

My $0.02: Go with an HD camera or you'll regret it down the road. There are some still picture/video combos now that are attractive, but the video capability won't match a dedicated camcorder. The smaller the camera, the more you'll be inclined to take it with you places and use it. Low light sensitivity and wide angle lens (the wider the better and generally more useful than telephoto) are important for most family video situations. Sony usually offers an add-on wide angle lens for most of their camcorders which gives you wide angle and telephoto in one camera. If you go with a solution that uses temporary storage (hard drive, flash memory) you need to have a solution to store and back up all that data and there will be a lot of it. It's doable, but that needs to be part of the solution. Think two 1TB external hard drives. The nice part of recording to DVD is it's self-archiving although you'll still want to make a backup DVD. I also tend to agree that the fewer moving parts the better which is a vote for flash memory.

Check here for deals.

 

[Anastasis]

We're looking at camcorders as well right now. I'm thinking HD is the only way to go at this point, and flash memory for the reasons discussed earlier. I can be kinda rough on my electronics, so flash memory seems much preferable over a hdd. Prices are really coming down on the HD camcorders right now, the canon flash models that were $1k a few months ago can be had for $6-700 now. I am thinking that there should be some nice deals to be had as the economy slows and we hit the christmas season.

I think that I am really zeroing in on the canon's because I hate Sony and their proprietary memory cards, but I have a few hundred dollars worth of Sony rebates that is keeping them in the game. A couple HD flash based cameras that I am looking at:

Canon vixia hf10/100

Sony CX-12

 

[HornBud]

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[Anastasis]

It seems liek the major drawback to the HD camcorders is a real lack of video editing software capable of handling these files.

 

[brntorng]

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