The best camcorder money* can buy?

cherrio

Hey All,

I would like to buy the best camcorder money* can buy, any suggestions?

* where money = €500

To be used for the usual stuff, recording family events and special moments, etc... Would be nice if it could take photos also (although can you take photos and record at the same time?). Would be nice if it could do 1080p @ 24fps, but that might be asking too much?

Was looking at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Panasonic-Camcorder-Recording-Intelligent-Recognition/dp/B0031RG4HM/ref=pd_cp_ce_1 but I have no idea if it is good value or bad value.

Any help would be greatly appreicated

Freddie59

cherrio wrote: »

Hey All,

I would like to buy the best camcorder money* can buy, any suggestions?

* where money = €500

To be used for the usual stuff, recording family events and special moments, etc... Would be nice if it could take photos also (although can you take photos and record at the same time?). Would be nice if it could do 1080p @ 24fps, but that might be asking too much?

Was looking at http://www.amazon.co.uk/Panasonic-Camcorder-Recording-Intelligent-Recognition/dp/B0031RG4HM/ref=pd_cp_ce_1 but I have no idea if it is good value or bad value.

Any help would be greatly appreicated

Just a bit of advice:

Most Hard Drive/Flash memory camcorders use AVCHD format. It's a very demanding software. Make sure your PC is up to it.

These might help:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2740437&tstart=135

http://discussions.info.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=11209221

thebaz

no expert , but someone told me jvc , make good camcoders , for price / value - i'm open to correction on this .

Freddie59

Top 10 Mini DV (Tape) camcorders

Top 10 Hard Drive camcorders

Top 10 Flash camcorders

cherrio

Thanks for the replies.

@Freddie59 - Won't be doing much editing (I suck at Adobe Premiere), just watching. I took a look at the Top10Reviews, but the cameras they are reviewing seem really old, the top two are 2007 and 2005.

I came across http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0031RG4HM/ref=noref?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&psc=1 seems like the job, but no internal HD. Anyone know how many minutes of video you would get on a 16GB SD card? I think it records in 1080i, not 1080p.

Ciaran500

I have a SD60 and am very happy with it. Looking at it now and it says it will record for 2hrs 7m on my empty 16gb card (but the battery wouldn't last that long). You can take pictures as you record and it doesn't miss a beat.

I like it, the zoom is incredibly long, its comfortable to hold and the image stabilisation is very good. Though, as with any camera in this price range the microphone doesn't give you great quality sound, video get very noisy in low light and the manual controls are a pain to use.

One thing to watch out for is that it records to a unusual format, its AVC but in a .mts wrapper. So not all editing programs support it.

cnocbui

The Panasonic GH2 DSLR is better than most camcorders for HD video quality

thebaz

cnocbui wrote: »

The Panasonic GH2 DSLR is better than most camcorders for HD video quality

actually , panasonic also have a bridge camera thats meant to be pretty good for video , not sure of the model

cnocbui

DSLRs are being used by film makers to shoot feature films. The GH2 is the best of the HD movie capable DSLRs for this purpose, better even than the Canon 7D, hence my recommendation.

johnmcdnl

thebaz wrote: »

actually , panasonic also have a bridge camera thats meant to be pretty good for video , not sure of the model

I have a panasonic FZ38 bridge camera that shoots AVCHD in HD.. not sure if it's 1080p but I think the newer models of this camera have 1080p video recording

thebaz

johnmcdnl wrote: »

I have a panasonic FZ38 bridge camera that shoots AVCHD in HD.. not sure if it's 1080p but I think the newer models of this camera have 1080p video recording

do you find it good ?

i have a very early version of this, fz8, doesnt shoot video

johnmcdnl

thebaz wrote: »

do you find it good ?

i have a very early version of this, fz8, doesnt shoot video

Personally I don't use it very much but if you check out some youtube videos you can see the quality isn't bad at all...

It's more than enough for the few wee bits of videoing I do but I don't know enough about camcorder/video quality to tell you is it very good or average if you know what I mean....

I only use it occasionally and the quality has been more than good enough for the little bit I use it for....