Camcorder Recommendations

Kila

Hi,

I know there are other threads on this, but my requirements are slightly different, so I wanted to ask for some advice. It's not an area that I know an awful lot about, and I would hate to buy a lemon!

I'm looking to get some form of camcorder as a christmas gift. I suppose I'm looking for an entry level model, costing anything up to about €250 (although I'll go a few quid over if it's perfect).

I've done a lot of reading online, and it seems that the main complaint with many cheaper cameras is poor video quality. I'm wondering if that's because many cameras are really that bad, or is it because some people would consider pretty ok video to be utter rubbish.

The camera will most likely be used indoors a lot, filming in sports halls and the like. Sound and picture should be decent, but the movies will most likely be watched on laptops and the like, so it doesn't have to be HD 45million inch screen high quality or anything. We will have to be able to make out what the people are doing, though!

I think something that would record to internal or SD memory would be ideal. I know miniDV has good quality, but reports online seem to say that they transfer to PC in realtime, and I don't think the recipient will have the patience to wait for an hour to see an hour of footage!

So, can anyone recommend any of the camcorders in this price range? There's quite a few available on elara.ie and dabs.ie, but the reviews are a very mixed bag and I'm having trouble deciding.

I'd really appreciate any help that anyone could give.

Kila

Some more detail - I've been doing more reading over the weekend, and a lot of people do seem to be recommending the minidv format for the best quality.

Just how slow is it to take data from a minidv tape to a computer? And is there an easy way to speed up the process (hardware and/or software)?

Bob Z

Kila wrote: »

Some more detail - I've been doing more reading over the weekend, and a lot of people do seem to be recommending the minidv format for the best quality.

Just how slow is it to take data from a minidv tape to a computer? And is there an easy way to speed up the process (hardware and/or software)?

You transfer it from camcorder to computer in real time. eg you just play and capture. so if you have an hour of footage it would take you a hour to load it into whatever editing app you have

I dont have a hard drive camcorder but i think there advantages would be convienence eg not having to use tapes. But i am not sure if their picture quality is as good as a minidv tape camcorder

decob

The main benefit of minidv is that it is the least compressed format in comparison to hard disk or dvd based cameras. If you intended to use the footage to cutdown/ edit into dvds etc - i'd go with minidv.