What camcorder?

Question

Im looking to buy my dad a camcorder for his birthday, it will be used mainly for shooting sceneries/landscapes. I would like to buy a mini dv type but it needs to have night mode and be able to take still digital photos with a decent amount of pixels. Around the £200 mark, any recommendations/suggestions/tips?! thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Glad you have chosen mini dv, with all the different formats about it's still the best quality.

The problem is that taking pictures/stills with a camcorder the quality is not that good, you may be lucky to get one that has 2 mega pixels, (most mobile phones have this) I have  phone that has 5 Mega pixels but the video is rubbish. What i am saying basically is that let the video camera take video and maybe he/you can get a reasonable stills camera.

As for which one, i personally would stay with Sony, don't worry about high zooms, 20x is more than enough, unless you are going to use a tripod, and ignore the digital zooms mine has 1000+ never use it. it just increases the size of the pixels and at high zoom you cant even see what the subject is! most have two different ways to get the data onto a PC, IE firewire, and USB I always use firewire, it has the best transfer rate.  

have a look at Sony DCR-HC62, a little over your price or Sony DCR-HC23 a little under

check out the link it will give you an idea

http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/cl/8/Camcor...

Good luck