Mini DV Camera Suggestion -- looking for a good one for vacation?

Question

I have a camera that I am looking to replace--the old thing finally gave up the ghost... it was a DV tape and had night vision to capture those evening activities [like kids trick or treating], external mic input for lav mics [record the kids reading books, etc...], great zoom [capture the kids on stage from the back of the room], good video quality, small for travel... would like suggestions on a current camera -- perhaps with 3CCD or similar?

Any suggestions? I want to keep the price under a thousand bucks... would like a smaller camera to take on trips... want to try to combine a good video camera with reasonable still performance -- perhaps above 3MP?? Tired of lugging around a still camera and a video camera.

Suggestions?

Answer 1

use sony cams they are the best

Answer 2

Try to scan thru the reviews:

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/d/Reviews&l...

Answer 3

Panasonic's PV-GS series is really very good.  3CCD with very good performance, and lets the user take control of a variety of manual features.

The college I went to bought a whole bunch of PV-GS120s (I think) for use by classes.  I have a PV-GS65 of my own.

Low-light performance, I'll admit, is a bit of a weak spot, though I don't often let myself get into situations where I don't have adequate lighting.  Furthermore, not sure if any of them in the series have optical image stabilization.  OIS would be a really nice feature, but my PV-GS65 has EIS, and therefore leads to some jumpy video when going handheld.

Overall, though, these things are great machines.

For more on this series and on other cameras, I've found that http://www.camcorderinfo.com is a great site for information like this.

Answer 4

At least consider the Canon HV20 or HV30. I have an HV20 and   I REALLY like it. Both are under a grand. I think the street price is coming down on the HV20 a bit more since the HV30 came out.

They are not 3CCD, but when I compared them at the store, these looked better than some 3CCD ones costing twice the price. These are High-Def and take 3MP stills. They do kind of OK in low light, but don't have night vision. The video is not grainy at all in good light. They have a shoe to mount a boom mic or external light. It has a mic input for other types and a built in light for night use. They use mini-DV tapes.

Two things that that I'm critical about. I wish the wide angle would go a bit more wide (zoom is great though!). I wish that when fast forwarding the time stamp would show instead of blanking out.

Sony has some good competition to Canon as well, but I've had bad luck with Sony in the past. Maybe they've gotten more reliable since then? Sony has night vision, so you might consider it if that's important.

Answer 5

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