Page 1 of Camcorder advice - I`m out of touch!!

My old man wants a new camcorder and I`m wondering what the best type to get nowadays is. He wants one for around £300-400. From what I can see theres one that record onto an SD card but that seems to be a really low resolution, ones that support the little digital tapes and then the ones where you can burn straight onto a dvd. The dvd one seems a good bet but I`m not too sure.

"I`ve not seen someone taking a beating like that, since someone put a banana down my pants and set a monkey loose.."

Mini DV is the most popular these days. They can be copied onto DVD via yr PC too (or of course straight onto normal tape)

HTH

Neil

Just make sure you get one with an image stabiser, optical if possible. It makes all the difference!

My Canon Hi8 if still working from 96!

You may want to consider something like a Sony or Canon that can record on widescreen....the format of the future (or today for that matter!)

I have a mini DV JVC that records in widescreen.
Dead easy to record onto DVD via,funnily enough,my DVD recorder.
Doing it via a PC may give you more editing options,but that doesn`t bother me for the type of stuff I do (usual family stuff).

This item was edited on Wednesday, 20th July 2005, 17:33

I have just got a Sony HC19 of Amazon for about 250. It seems pretty good appart form the software which is doing my nut in.

I was looking in a camcorder mag the other day and the Sony HC 22 (300quid)and JVC GRD 240(£230ish) - both came out very well.

Just about any Sony will do fine. Software is known to be a weak link unfortunately, but you can use third party stuff and a firewire link. Don`t get a JVC always going wrong since they moved production away from Japan. Interesting username you have there! Roses or IB fan?

Quote:
Don`t get a JVC always going wrong since they moved production away from Japan.

Not only libellous,but inaccurate. :/
JVC is always one of my first choice brands,simply because they (IMO) are far better built than a lot of the competition and I have always found their reliability top notch.

Four year old JVC CRT.
Two year old JVC DV camera.
Year old JVC LCD.

No issues with any of them.
Solid stuff.

Maybe I should rephrase...
In my opinion they are not very reliable any longer.
An opinion formed from working in a busy camcorder retailer for the last 16 years and just recently (1 year or so) about half of all our returns are JVC that have chewed tapes up or constantly show `clean heads` message.