Which camcorder is good below 1000 CAD ?

Question

what features to look in for buying a good camcorder ?

Answer 1

JVC HD10

Sony DCR-SR10

Things to look for:

- Hard Drive: Messing around with Mini DV's is a chore. At least 30GB hard drive is good.

- Recording formats: The more the better 480p, 780i, 780p, 1080i, 1080p.

- Digital zoom: It is critical if you are doing a lot of recording from far away, such as at a High School football game or whatnot.

Answer 2

Even though HDD (Hard Drive) camcorders may be a bit more convenient, being tapeless and what not, HDV (miniDV cassettes) is MUCH better for the following reasons:

QUALITY: HDV compresses quite a bit less than HDD, or HD miniDVD meaning much better resolution.

COMPATIBILITY: MiniDV camcorders work with virtually any video editing platform. HDD has a few options, but not nearly as many

STORAGE: MiniDV offers a cheap and practical means of data archiving: to cheap $2 miniDV cassettes. With HDD you are limited to the Hard Drive of your camcorder. But what if you fill up the hard drive on a shoot? And how are you gonna store your source footage? What if your computer crashes, or your external hard drive fails? Believe me, miniDV is much easier to archive.

And another thing, digital zoom is useless. Optical zoom is much better. With digital zoom, you lose a lot of quality, and the camera shake is unuseable. Most people, like myself, just keep the digital zoom turned off.  

Now, what camera to get? The Canon HV30. No contest. Excellent HD picture resolution. Brilliant color saturation. Decent sensitivity on its 1/2.7" CMOS sensor. Almost instant automatic focus.

Other cool features: 24p mode (for a professional film look), External microphone input:1/8" mini-stereo jack (unbalanced)

All for $780USD (which is about the same in CAD, considering the recession and the weakening value of the US dollar and all).

If you're not sold on the HV30, you could look at the Sony HDR-HC9 as well. It's about $1,000, I believe. I can't give you a firsthand review, but I hear it has excellent picture quality.

I hope that helps a bit....anyways, best of luck :)