Reviews for Digital Camcorders? 278
bluprint asks: "I've been looking for information regarding digital camcorders. Googling for 'digital camcorder reviews' (and other variations) of course brings up tons of results, but I thought I would get input from the slashdot crowd. Does Slashdot have any suggestions on these camcorders considering price, features and quality? I plan to use it for my summer vacation, but also intend to keep it for many years (possibly even after I have kids, in a couple years), so I'm willing to spend a little more for something high quality, which uses media that will be around for a while. I'm not interested in fancy/artistic things like video editing on my computer, I just want high quality video, preferably keeping it under $1000. Are there suggestions on where to read some thorough, quality reviews of different products, and maybe even educate myself about what to look for in a digital camcorder?"
Re:thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)
Two things
An honest-to-god professional (Score:2, Interesting)
The main weapons of choice for the guys on film sets would either be the Panasonic DVX100 or the Sony PD150. Yeah, these are a little out of your proce range (understatement) but if you really want something that will last and has outstanding image quality, you can't lose with either. The new JVC camera that records HD to a MiniDV tape actually only has a single CCD, so you'll get good sharpness but little in the way of color depth- and when you compare images in a side-by-side, you realize how important the vividness and clarity of your colors can be.
One final thing to note- the Sonys in general have a much more solid build quality than anything else out there. The Panasonic has a really unique look in 24P mode, but it's not quite as robust and it can't handle low light as well. Good luck.
JVC (Score:1, Interesting)
JVC Here (6 years old) (Score:3, Interesting)
- Great snapshots with the digital camera feature.
- 50x zoom (better than my new Sony 3.2 mega-pixel digital camera).
- Video out connections plug right into TV, hit playback and your watching your movies.
- Comes with VHC-VHS Adapter for playing with older VCR's.
Drawbacks?
a) Had to replace the factory battery after four years. $50 bucks (Not really a complaint, but when the rechargable goes, it goes. No warning. This sucks when your out on a faimily gathering with no backup).
b) No USB, Firewire/Serial only (My model, this might have changed by now).
c) The wife won't let me record her naked
This camera cost me around $650 spacebucks in 1998. Check the features on the model you want to purchase. It should be cheaper now as well.
Enjoy,
Re:Canon rocks (Score:1, Interesting)
Nothing like a little trip to eBay (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll vouch for the Sony Digital-8 cameras too. I picked up a DCR-TRV120 at the end of '01 from a fellow who'd barely used it. Included manual, cables, additional higher-capacity battery, camera bag, UV filter, and even a couple of tapes: US$436. eBay is a goodThing.
Good camera. Nowhere near as small as the lovely little MiniDV cameras out today, but for the price, hey -- the picture is brilliant over S-Video. It's got FireWire, and I've got iMovie. It's wonderful. Plenty of features, can do wide-format, yadda yadda. And the tapes aren't hard to find.
NightShot doesn't turn the dark into day, but it afforded me some good clear footage one night after a couple of cars collided on my streetcorner. And even without NightShot, having used it for iChat AV with a friend, I can say it's got better low-light performance than the iSight.
One thing that sold me on this one was the video pass-through conversion, so I can take analog video-in and stream it as DV to my computer. It's purportedly not as high-quality as a dedicated video converter, but again, for the price, I'm not complaining.
I have heard good reports about the Canon DV cameras as well.
As for web resources: My first stop for video-camera info is DVSpot [dvspot.com], from the same fellow (Jeff Keller) who runs the Digital Camera Resource Page [dcresource.com].