Decent camcorder for concerts?

Question

Okay so I'm fifteen and I don't have a fortune but I can spend up to $250..I want to be able to videotape concerts..I go weekly to my local venues..and help would be greatly appreciated :]

Answer 1

Presuming the bands you want to video are loud, you need a camera that has a mic-gain control. Without it, the auto mic level circuit will be overpowered and the audio will sound muddy and be unusable.

There are four ways to control audio:

1) A "switch" to allow "normal" or "Low" mic gain. The Sony DCR-HC28 and HC96 had this selection in their menu - "Low" mic gain is used for loud audio.

2) Full manual audio control: The cheapest camcorders with this are the Canon HV20, HV30, Sony HDR-HC7 and HC9.

3) Use an external gain control like those from BeachTek. This means the camcorder must have an external mic jack and you will use external mics.

4) Use a "field recorder" like those from M-Audio, Zoom, Marantz and Fostex (among others...) and replace the crappy audio captured by the camcorder with the field recorder audio.