Hard drive Camcorders???

Question

What is the best Hard drive camcorder for the money. I want to spend around 500 or less. I've been reading reviews of the sony handycam and jvc models but am confused on the online reviews for picture quality in low light. Any suggestions on cameras that are better?

Answer 1

Hard-drive camcorders are probably not the best idea at a $500 budget, I recommend you just go with  MiniDV for right now until you get a larger budget.

Answer 2

Look at the JVC MG-series, particularly the 255. It's in your price range, and it's an HDD cam.

I wouldn't recommend an HDD cam if you plan to edit your videos, however.

Answer 3

A $500 hard drive camcorder? It would be best if you just keep saving your money.

If you want best possible video quality, then you will stay with miniDV tape. Least compression = best available video quality.

Currently, the only really good camcorder hard drive is an external - from Firestore. It saves in DV and HDV format just like miniDV tape and you need a miniDV tape based camcorder to use one... not like the heavily compressed consumer internal hard drives...