Suggest a good camcodersin the range of $1200-$1500?

Question

preferably a hard disc drive as the storage medium

Answer 1

I just got an Sony HDR-SR11 (60GB version) identical to a HDR-SR12 (120GB).

It's good.  Does 1920x1080.  It's a hybrid, which means it can record to the HDD or to a memory stick.

It depends on the features you want.  The problem is how to get the high-def video stored and then displayed in the future on your TV.  You need alot of (safe) storage to do that.

I got my SR11 for 1080 at bestbuy...it's probably <$1000 online.

Has all the outputs except for ieee(firewire)

The other choice I was looking at was the Canon.

This site has alot of information

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/

Answer 2

The HDR-SR12 is a good camcorder.

Please keep in mind that there is more to video quality than the camcorder. It is about lighting, angles, audio, and other items when you are capturing the video (even if it is only home-movies), and it is also about what you get off the camera and what you edit with (and your editing skills.

Sony, Panasonic and Canon all make hard drive based high definition camcorders that compress high definition video using a relatively new method called "AVCHD". It compresses a lot.

In the video world, digital video compression = discarded data = reduced video quality. Compression is fine if you want to do that to your video AFTER you have captured the video and you need various compression rates downstream (some to post, some to put on DVD, etc.), but when you compress that much as the first step, there is no recovering that data you lost.

Take a hint from the professionals:

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

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

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

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

Other than 1 mis-categorized Panasonic, there are no AVCHD-internal-hard drive based camcorders they use. This is for a couple of reasons:

1) MiniDV tape is cheap.

2) MiniDV tape has a good, long shelf life.

3) The miniDV tape is the archive (how are you planning to archive the hard drive video you capture? If you think you will save time because "USB is easier to copy" what happens to the video you want to archive? You will need to burn optical media or copy to another hard drive or two before you start the editing phase. The initial perceived time savings gets cut by a LOT. If you want to skip the archiving, that's cool - but when the camcorder hard drive is wiped because you are getting ready for the next project and the computer project file is deleted because you are done with that project, there is not way to recover that video you cut - it is truly gone forever.)

4) If the camera breaks, getting the video is relatively easy from a miniDV tape based camcorder - how are you planning to get the data from the hard drive based camcorder when you drop (and break) the hard drive based camcorder? Hint: Call these folks http://drivesavers.com/ but be warned, they are expensive.

5) Not all current video editors can edit all camcorder's AVCHD - i.e., Sony Vegas can deal with Sony cameras, but not necessarily Canon camera... Be careful which editor you get to ensure compatibility with your camera. On the other hand, ANY video editor that can handle HDV can handle all manufacturer's camcorders which record in HDV (and DV).

6) HDV and DV compress a lot less than the other storage media available for consumer camcorders. Less compression = better available video quality.

7) When you are done editing, you can export the finished video project back out to the camcorder (onto miniDV tape) for project archival. If you can afford it, you can get an external deck.

It is strange how the pricing works... there is the "entry level which is about $300-$500; then the high-end consumer which  is around $800... then there is a big jump to about $2000... then the pro and prosumer series. Then a bump tp $3000. This is true of all media storage types:

Canon ZR800, ZR900

Canon HV20, HV30, Sony HDR-HC7, HC9 (HC11?)

Sony HDR-FX1, FX7

Sony HVR-V1U, Z1U; Canon XHA1; Panasonic HDX200

If you still want a hard drive based camcorder, do what the professionals do: get a miniDV tape based camcorder and an external hard drive (Sony HVR-V1U or check out the Firestore drives which save to DV or HDV: http://firestore.com/solutions/catalog.a...