what type of camcorder to buy

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coleen

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I want to buy a gift of a camcorder for someone with little experience of using camcorder He would use it for family use and holiday and maybe for filming some wild life. Can you give me any tips on what to buy I was thinking of spending around 300 - 400 . My query is do I buy a mini dvd or one that records on an sd card. He does have a laptop but he has little tech knoweledge. I would want it to be fairly easy to use. Any advantages of one over the other? thanks in advance
 
I bought a sony dvd handycam 106 last year which is fine but each mini dvd only takes around 20 mins of footage.
If I was buying again, I would buy one with a hard drive memory.
Have a look at this forum which I think is excellent:
[broken link removed]
There are loads of similar posts to yours - have a search around.
 
In the age of hard disk video dvd's are a step backwards. Also I say dvd's are just too pinickity to use and there is always format issues.

Last I heard hard disks cameras were not that great - yet. Poor picture quality apparently.

Get a straight forward mini dv tape camera. Sonys are good in dim light. Good lenses. Disregard optical zoom. Use a free program caled dvio to transfer the video in digital format via the firewire cable and virtualdub to compress the size.
 
Think long and hard about this one. Firstly the images captured on a camcorder should survive regardless of whether the hardware that captured them is still in existance. Imagine if you lost your kids first few years all because a Hard Drive broke - as all hard drives eventually do. To this end I would second using the MiniDv tape. If your camcorder dies you won't lose the video. In a HDD system this is what happens unless you back up the video regularly. MiniDv tapes are about 60 mins long and contain about 10-20G of data (DV is very high quality => lots of filespace). The tapes cost next to nothing and the MiniDV camcorders are much cheaper than the alternatives.
 
Yep, I got a Sony Mini DV Camera 6 months back & it's the business. Windows Movie Maker is on my laptop (seems to come as standard). It will convert the tape to digital format & then it's really simple to play around and edit footage, adding in music, text and all types of pretty cool effects. You don't need to be a tech wizzard but you'll need to play around with it for a while.
 
thanks for that I think I will go for mini dvd Bobby Fowler do you mind telling me what model your sony is?
 
Coleen,

You won't go too far wrong with the following:


Price: €226

BTW I paid over €600 for something similar 4 years ago - the prices on MiniDv camcorders have really dropped.
 
I got a Sony handy cam DCR-hc24e as a present last year (around €250)! cant find a fault with it, even my Mam can use it......she still cant figure out teletext!
 
Lissard, I am also trying to buy simple to use camcorder, I have looked up that one on pixmania, is it worth buying the pack at 312 that includes extra battery, tapes etc. Is there anything else I need to get, cables to attach to pc? As you can see I know nothing about cameras or computers, this is a gift for 23 yr old with a new laptop so should be fairly up to date, not very technically minded though so just need basics. Thanks
 
KerryG,

It depends what you'd like to do with the camcorder. I would just buy the camcorder by itself,a bag for it and tapes. You could of course get the tapes in any Dixons/Currys etc. The spare battery is only useful if the person using the camcorder is doing lots of filming - in my experience the camcorder only gets used for a couple of minutes at a time and you should always have enough charge. If you were taping weddings and that sort of event the spare battery is a must.

More experienced users might want to edit digital video on a PC. To do this you will need a 1394 interface card on the PC and a 1394 cable. I wouldn't bother with these for a complete novice!
 
Lissard, Thanks for advise, have been driven demented trying to decide which one to buy. Think I will stick with the basics for now, recipient can be getting the extra bits if they want later. Mainly be used for family occasions and hols
 
I got the Sony DCR HC96E - it was a bit dearer than entry level camcorders but had a really good review. Got it from Pixmania.
 
Thanks for all the advise. I have a clearer picture of what to buy so now off to shop Pixmania looks good
 
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