Lets talk Video Cameras

[Jeff70]

Hey guys,

Im looking for a camcorder, mainly for family stuff my son plays high school ball and has been hounding me to start recording the games.

What should I be looking for as far as options? Optical zoom? Should I go HD?

I would love to be able to get nice clear shots of his games with a decent zoom, im looking to spend $300-$500

Thanks Jeff

[ErikLS2]

I have a Sony Mini DVD from a few years ago, not HD but is 16:9 and picture is really good, expecially in low inside the house kind of light. Messing with the discs is a challenge as each one only holds 20 minutes, I would probably prefer a hard drive based one. Nice thing about the discs though is if you have enough of them, recording time is unlimited.

[JEFFTATE]

I shopped for a camera a while back.
What I gathered was, that you want a camera with internal flash memory ?? ( I'm not sure what you really call it , I'm not an electronics expert ), not a removable hard disc or a memory card that's removable .
You also want a good bit of optical zoom as opposed to digital zoom.

I was looking at JVC and Sony at Best Buy.
They seem to have a knowledgable staff and good prices..
I didn't buy a camera yet.
Other stuff came up and sidetracked that purchase for a while..

[6'9"Witha69]

Definitely optical v. Digital zoom if possible. You lose clarity when you use digital zoom.

[Krazed]

Yes, with Optical Zoom, it actually uses the lense physically to do the zooming. With digital, it "enhances" the image through digital software means and the quality degrades fairly quickly.

For what its worth, ive heard good things about the Canon HD Camcorders. The good ones will set you back about $1000. However, it all depends on how much money you have as to what we can suggest for that price range.

Let us know your Budget, and we'll let you know what good cameras are around!

When in doubt, stick with Canon. They all get great reviews. However, for the money (Usually half the cost) the JVC Digital camcorders are a great bang for the buck, but they have worse optical sensors and therefor cant do low light stuff as well.

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/JVC-Everio-GZ-HD300-Camcorder-Review-36553.htm

[John Wright]

I have a Sony Mini DVD from a few years ago, not HD but is 16:9 and picture is really good, expecially in low inside the house kind of light. Messing with the discs is a challenge as each one only holds 20 minutes, I would probably prefer a hard drive based one. Nice thing about the discs though is if you have enough of them, recording time is unlimited.
I bought my wife one of those mini-dvd recorders and that thing is a pain due to the limited storage space on each disc. I suggest a camera with a hard drive also.

[79-TA]

I have a Sony DCR-SR47 Camcorder. It has more optical zoom than my hand has steadiness (60x.) The 60 gig hard drive means I've never had to worry about having enough memory, only battery. My battery only lasts about an hour and a half, but there are larger batteries available.

The picture quality is pretty good, but it took me 4 months of ownerships to realize that I wasn't shooting in the highest resolution. Here's a video in "medium" resolution.

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and one in "high quality"

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In short, I'd describe it as standard dvd quality.

For comparison, here's a friend's camera shooting in 720p:

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The downside to this camera would be primarily price and lack of HD capability. It was about 400 when I got it in April. Also, I'm always jealous of the folks with Go-Pro cameras and mounting equipment. I've yet to figure out a good way to strap my Sony to the Trans Am's dash.

[Jeff70]

Hey guys thanks for the input. I've been searching & searching to the point of almost giving up.

Here's what I've come up with a standard def cameras video quality is no where near what a HD cameras is even in low res. So I've decided to go HD I'm down to a Canon HV40 $849 records in standard def and high def 10x optical zoom most HD's have less than 15x optical zoom the HV Records on a mini tape and is a lot eaiser to burn a video to disk via a stand alone burner, cons are it seems that the HD market is going the way of flash drives and hard drives. Next a Canon HF20 $699 15x optical zoom this is a flash drive unit & you can use a SD card problem with the HF verison is the files it creates are only in HD no option for standard and the files are AVCHD which from what I understand are very big files and need to be loaded on to your hard drive before you can do anything with it.

And that leads me to the next problem my laptop is almost 5yrs old and cannot handle the files or the editing software I wasn't ready to upgrade computers but now it looks like if I want the flash drive camera I don't have a choice but to purchase a new computer.


Jeff

[JEFFTATE]

And that leads me to the next problem my laptop is almost 5yrs old and cannot handle the files or the editing software I wasn't ready to upgrade computers but now it looks like if I want the flash drive camera I don't have a choice but to purchase a new computer.


Jeff

I feel your pain.
I have a Go-Pro , and I've taken a bunch of in-car video with it.
But , some of the videos are 15 minutes long , or so ...
I have to edit them down to 10 minutes before I can post them on YouTube.

[JEFFTATE]

Also, I'm always jealous of the folks with Go-Pro cameras and mounting equipment. I've yet to figure out a good way to strap my Sony to the Trans Am's dash.

I've got a Go-Pro , it makes pretty good video.
But , I have trouble figuring out which setting it is on , while I am belted into the car , and it is suction-cupped to the windshield.
All the controls and screens (on a Go-Pro) are on the front of the unit , so you have to get it set up before you fasten into position.

[79-TA]

Hey guys thanks for the input. I've been searching & searching to the point of almost giving up.

Here's what I've come up with a standard def cameras video quality is no where near what a HD cameras is even in low res. So I've decided to go HD I'm down to a Canon HV40 $849 records in standard def and high def 10x optical zoom most HD's have less than 15x optical zoom the HV Records on a mini tape and is a lot eaiser to burn a video to disk via a stand alone burner, cons are it seems that the HD market is going the way of flash drives and hard drives. Next a Canon HF20 $699 15x optical zoom this is a flash drive unit & you can use a SD card problem with the HF verison is the files it creates are only in HD no option for standard and the files are AVCHD which from what I understand are very big files and need to be loaded on to your hard drive before you can do anything with it.

And that leads me to the next problem my laptop is almost 5yrs old and cannot handle the files or the editing software I wasn't ready to upgrade computers but now it looks like if I want the flash drive camera I don't have a choice but to purchase a new computer.


Jeff


Yikes. Sadly, with HD clarity comes HD sized files.


It's kind of ironic how showing home videos on one's tv is kind of getting harder despite technology getting better. I usually just hook up the AV cables directly to my camera to show things to family. Otherwise, I have not made any dvd's of anything, just youtube posts.

[monza]

Regarding video cameras, does anyone know is there a disadvantage to going to mid priced Canon, JVC and such for in car shooting? Are the images more stable or less then something like the Go-Pro?

I guess what I'm asking why are so many people using the Go-Pro? Is is just because it does the job and is relatively inexpensive?
Don't want to buy a better camera and have it suck for in car video?

(camera will be mostly 'family life' and then secondly for track type events)

Thanks