Key Features To Look For?

Question

What are some key features to look for in digital video cameras?

To elaborate a bit, what is a good sensor type for camcorders? As an example, while I was reading about a few camcorders, it said it has a 1/8" advanced CCD sensor. Others have a 1/5", 1/6", or 1/3". Does this relate to image qulality? In what way. What would be acceptable or average?

Is digital zoom a good option, too? With a few Canon camcorders it says they have 2000x digital zoom. Would this be a good option, or is optical the way to go?

I hope you can understand me alright. Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

Bigger sensor is better - higher quality. It is simple - on bigger area of the CCD you can cram more receptors = pixels. It still takes the same cut of scenery but spreads it into more pixels = better quality, better resolution.

They are all "acceptable" (otherwise no one would buy them and they would be taken out of shelves). Just decide on your budget and go for the biggest for XX $

As for a digital zoom.. it is a nice feature but really, it is only a advertising trick. The only important value is optical zoom.

The difference is this - optical zoom is produced by changing distances between lens and sensor. So zooming in makes smaller piece of scenery being spread over all sensor pixels. The quality is exactly the same as non zoomed picture (video or picture - same thing for the explanation). In the other words - you will have 720x480 pixels in given frame whether there is whole forest or zoomed one tree IF optical zoom. After the optical zoom reaches the max, the cam goes automatically into digital zoom. You will not recognize it at first (only if your cam has different color indicator for optical/digital). But what will be happening - no more adding info, no more moving lens. The picture on the sensor will not change anymore. The only thing which will change is the picture on the screen. The cam's computer will start increasing pixel size making the picture bigger and bigger and cropping it at the same time to fit the screen. So going back to my tree example - with digital zoom the forest will have 720x480 pixels but the tree only for example 320x240 pixels, but those pixels would be big, enlarged to fill 720x480 frame = quality loss.

So for quality cameras look how much of optical zoom they have. The digital is just for fun, but not for serious use. You will not see much difference on you cam screen since the screen is too small and even big pixels are so small that your eye will not see the difference. But try to play som 200x digital zoom on big screen tv and you will see the difference.

Plus - any zoom more than some 40-50 is impossible to hold in your hands (and over 100x not even hand stabilized on the handrail for example). You would need tripod. So it would be good to see that building 20 miles away, but you wouldn't be able to record an eagle flying high with such a zoom.

So I would not buy a camera with digital zoom ONLY. Always go for optical first. As high optical, as you can afford to pay for and take whatever digital that cam will have as an extra bonus.

Have fun, hope it helped

Johnny