Camcorders - what's all that about then...

Ahhh....the new-father camcorder syndrome! Been there, done it.
Like most things, you'll use it initially, birthdays and Christmas, days out, and then one day you'll realise you haven't used it for two years.
ANY decent modern digital camcorder is a million miles better than the old stuff of 10 years ago, so you won't go wrong whatever you get to be honest, and the novelty is very likely to wear off after a year or two.
I bought a JVC jobbie when they first became small and digital about 8 years ago and it cost me around £800. You'll get an updated version for that now at a fraction of the price, so just get out the Argos catalogue, pick a top brand, pitch in at mid-price, and get stuck in.
I transfer mine (when I do any) to DVD without any trauma.
Good luck with the new baby.

Thanks Rasher. Argos isn't in Australia (although I remember it well), but I get your drift...

Sorry..I hadn't noticed you are down there.

been there, got the T-shirt. Bought a DV Sony when our 1st was born and I now have a stack of about 20 full tapes - none of which have been transferred to DVD & therefore they never get watched. Amount of video taken has declined with each passing year (we're now up to kiddie number 3 and we have to prompt ourselves to do a bit of vid once in a while, otherwise he'll be asking why his first appearance on the family video was at his 18th birthday!).

I guess the 2 things that discourage us from doing too much vid are (i) the size of the camcorder (even though it's a mini-DV one it's still a bit of a lump) and (ii) the faff of copying the vid to the PC, editing it etc. The quality and professionalism of the results is great but it's a faff and very timeconsuming.

I came across a couple of web recommendations for a little Sanyo camcorder:
http://www.vnunet.com/computeractive/hardware/2162048/r...-sanyo-xacti-vpc-hd1
It does high def and records onto SD cards. This would have been very expensive/limiting previously but with the falling price of cards is now quite viable. It looks like this model can be had for £250 in UK now. The SD cards mean it is small and also files can simply be drag & dropped onto the PC.

I'd prob go for one of these if I was looking to buy now.

HTH
Phil

Given the comments above above about declining use of the video camera - think outside of the box.

What do you think that you want to record - small snippets of action perhaps - not many hours of live action.

If so consider a digital camera that also has movie capability - OK the image is not large but they snippets do convey atmosphere and do record the occasion. You can also take still pictures that show the event in full colour and reasonable detail and can be printed. And you only have one unit to carry around with you.

I would avoid magnetic tapes for the above reasons. Some camcorders will record directly to DVDs of different sizes, which is convenient, others to a solid-state medium which you can download to computer and then burn as a DVD.

Nick

quote:

Originally posted by Derek Wright:

If so consider a digital camera that also has movie capability - OK the image is not large but they snippets do convey atmosphere and do record the occasion. You can also take still pictures that show the event in full colour and reasonable detail and can be printed. And you only have one unit to carry around with you.

That's a good idea. The Canon S2IS still camera that I had shot video at 24 frames per second, could zoom while recording (although it recorded the sound of the lense movement too...), and on the highest resoultion a 512MB SD card would take about 4.5 minutes of video. So I guess an 8 GB memory card would have taken at least an hour of video.

I can always rely on this forum to come up with the goods - thanks guys.

Phil, that camera looks about perfect for us. I certainly don't need the 30GB of memory that the HDD cameras have, and that looks to be a really flexible option.

Derek & Dean, another good option.

I'll discuss with SWMBO and let you know what new toy we get!

Thanks to all

Another one worth looking at is teh Sanyo Xacti. Got my daughter one for Christmas. It's very small and records video onto an SD card. Also takes 6Mp photos. Has a drop in dock connected to teh PC so transfer is very easy. Only thing I would criticise is it's slow focus in low light situations.

Regards,

Willy.

Thanks Willy. Great minds think alike (see Phil's note earlier).