Which camcorder?

[linkyplumb]

Evening All

As i sit here eagerly awaiting the birth of our first child, I am doing a bit of research into a camcorder.

But alas I am in a tither as to what to get.

I used to use a hi8 Sony years ago, but that gave up the ghost along time ago.

Looking on various sites, I see there are HD models.Whilst I do not own a HD telly at the moment, I am thinking of getting an HD camcorder, hopefully choosing one that is not obsolete before I even use it.

Is it worth the extra for an HD model?

Any suggestions gratefully received

Graham

 

[ChrisFrost]

The most important thing is to capture those memories. Once they're gone, they're gone. Don't allow choosing a camcorder to get in the way.

HD makes sense because that's the way things are going, but just being HD doesn't make a camcorder better than a non-HD one. You've had a camcorder before, so you know that a good lens, decent low light performance, good battery life, a mic input all make a camcorder usable in real world applications.

Have a look at some reviews from the specialist camcorder forums.

 

[ericmark]

I was lucky. Had I bought the camcorder I would have selected one using a SD memory card. However my wife bought it and got one using a DV tape. I was rather disappointed as the transfer to DVD has to be real time. Then I realised that with SD cards they have to be Code 6 or better and although Code 2 are cheap Code 6 cost far more than tape and I can get 5 x 10Gig tapes for £8 but a single 8Gig Class 6 is £15 now and if you go into high street more like £50 each.

Also I found my first Camcorder analogue was mono and it picks up the mobile phone polling noise. Lucky the second digital one is stereo and is unaffected by mobile phones. Things like this you only find out after you buy and first one bought in Turkey to record a wedding so could not return. I would buy from a shop that will exchange it if problem like that is found.

I have found both will work with low light and both have really good zoom but really the zoom is more than can be used hand held and really a gimmick. The small battery on DV lasts the full 90min of a tape on long play but the older analogue one always had a problem taking a whole tape on a single battery even though it was much bigger. But the old one I could charge battery out of the machine the new one needs the battery to be fitted into machine to charge so one can't leave spare on charge while using the other one.

Both say they will take stills but in both cases they take a short movie and I note some compacts and even some D-SLR cameras will now take cine and one may be better with a still camera that also takes movies than a movie camera that says it takes stills.

Both view finders are monochrome but DV has a LCD screen that is colour although saves battery using view finder I find in monochrome hard to find what one is looking for. So nearly always use screen.

Size is also something to consider my camcorder fits just in my pocket but my D-SLR is really big and is a real pain as one feels like one is carrying a label saying "Mug me I'm rich" and so I don't use it for every day photos.