I am looking to buy my first camcorder. Need help on which one I should chose.?

Question

I am expecting my first child, so I would like to know what cameras I should look at and which ones I should stay away from. Thanks

Answer 1

Buy a HDD sony handycam SE42. its not quite expensive and i think it can record upto 20hours recording. It doesn not need the normal cassette to put in and replace which were there in older camcodr

Answer 2

First, set a budget.

Second, help us understand if you want to do any sort of editing - whether this means just copying to a computer for upload or email, or doing the fun stuff like cutting the bad video, adding titles and credits and scene transitions and such.

MiniDV tape continues to provide the best available video quality because the DV format stored to the digital tape compresses less than any other currently available consumer format.

Most internal hard drive based camcorders and some higher-end flash memory camcorders compress their video a lot more.

DO NOT BUY A DVD BASED CAMCORDER. Their video is store with a LOT of compression and the video (especially for editing) is terrible.

Take a hint from the professionals:

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBus...

http://www.panasonic.com/business/provid...

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/contro...

http://pro.jvc.com/prof/attributes/categ...

They use miniDV tape. It has a long shelf life (for archiving), it is stable and cheap... and it provides the best available video quality. You do not have to be a pro to use similar tools.

In the case of flash memory or hard drive based camcorders, how are you planning to archive the video? This is an extra step that the miniDV tape camcorders do not have - the tape you shot IS the archive - don't reuse the tape.

Answer 3

i agree sony is the best.

Answer 4

sony is the best!!