So, I have a few Bestbuy giftcards to burn, and I was thinking about getting an inexpensive camcorder, most likely a MiniDV.
I’m thinking maybe the Canon ZR800 or ZR850 vs. the Panasonic PV-GS80 or maybe the Sony DCR-HC28.
Anybody got an opinion?
i’ve got the canon ZR500, and it works great for me.
I’d suggest go with that.
Lucky your works so well; I’ve had mine in for warranty repair FOUR times, and it still doesn’t work properly! I gave up on it and now use a sony minivid cam. No problems but it is slightly bigger and heavier.
at that low of a price range, they are all going to be basically the same quality. (it’s like saying which base model cheapest car per company should i get…probably none of them)
not trying to sound like an ‘video elitist’ or anything, they are simply going to be basically the same camera, using different company jargon trying to set them apart.
at that price range, i would base my descision on whatever has the cheapest accessories, spare batteries (only use authentic batteries whichever camera you get, no EBAY!!!), etc…
edit: don’t go on gigantic optical zoom…20 times the zoom, the shaking is maginfied 20 times…you are going to need a tripod the cost of the camera to hold a shot zoomed in 20 times steady!)
nightshot is garbage unless you have an additional IR light in use, even on my $2000 camera
I have a sony handycam and it works great. I havn’t really used many other cameras, but the sony works well and is easy to use.
Thanks everyone for your input! I decided on the Canon ZR800. The determining feature? External mic input. Not even the more expensive ZR830/ZR850 had that.
that’s a good feature to base it on
The cheaper zr500 has the same external mic input.
Sony Handycam DCR-HC21 NTSC works great it’s tiny, protable light and strong (it was in my pocket on a rainy day and I was riding up a steep slope on my uni and I bailed right on top of it and it still works great and it’s been dropped more times than I can count from 3-5 feet up (waist height and eyeball height) it’s a miniDV camera by the way or you can go one model up and pay double the price (on amazon.com my camera was about $200 and the next model up is $420 although mine is more compact and for my hand size all the buttons and switches are with easy reach of the hand holding the camrea which makes for good singlewd hand operation leaving the other hand free from directing people or moving things or holding yourself up…
Look for the CCD chip size. The bigger the CCD, the better the quality of video. If you can get a 3ccd camera, go for it.
mine’s a .17 but it’s still really good picture quality…
Yeah, most cameras in that range will be a 1/6th or 1/5th inch ccd chip. I got really lucky and got a 1/3" ccd camera for 150 dollars. They all produce some pretty good videos.
I’m in the market for an upgrade or some new equipment but nothing out there now is what I like anything that has all the bottons where I want is not a good quality camera and anything that is a good camera is set up realy awkward and is hard to use… I got lucky with my camera because it fits my needs now I need to find myself a good wide angle lens and a good fish eye lens and a good mic and a good light, all of this will cost me a ton but will make craeating videos SO much easier and the quality of audio and lighting will be WAY better.
panasonic’s pro stuff just got some great new recording media, i bet it will trickle down to consumer stuff soon enough
I recently purchased a JVC Everio GZ-MG37u (30GB HDD) for the marketing dept in my company. It’s nice, small, quiet, and doesn’t require media. It also has a USB connection which is nice since not every PC has IEEE1394.
I purchased a MiniDV camera for myself yesterday. I went this route for basically two reasons. I don’t want to restrict myself to 7 hours of video (MUT this summer is three weeks, and I’m not bringing a laptop) and MiniDV is cheap.
I believe that MiniDV tapes are also available in 80min. I also just discovered that transfer to PC with MiniDV happens in realtime. Another score for HDD. I did a bit of research, and supposedly, MiniDV is higher quality than either HDD or DVD. I also read that MiniDV is “easier to edit”…although I’m not sure I buy that.
If price and storage limitations had not been a concern, I may have gone HDD for myself.
The main advantage about MiniDV tapes is that there are no compression rates at all while recording or putting the video on your comp. It gives you a huge, high quality file that you can do anything with.
MiniDV tapes are very cheap too. You can get good amount of tapes that can last for months for a cheap cheap price, then just save the tapes for as long as you want to either record over, or to keep to watch again and again.
The hardrives and cds are great and all, but I dont like the fact they get compressed as you record, then usually get compressed again to go on your comp, and again once your done editing everything.
I think there is a reason why those huge nice cameras that can be over 1000 dollars still use DV tapes. =p
MiniDV does compress the video and it is lossy compression. But it is still very high quality and not nearly as lossy as the MPEG4 style compression you have with the hard drive style video cameras. DV video is also easier to edit than MPEG4 video since each frame is compressed independently.
The way it was described to me is that mini dv is compressed in between the frames (dosen’t really make sense to me either) but all the frames are still there. Mini Dvd compresses the frames and in between the frames so some of them are fakes. It works ok if you just play it back without editing but it screwes up if you edit it and chop things up.
Pretty much what I found out on my quest for a camcorder is that if you wan’t to edit at all for any reason get a mini dv. Period <notice the period!
You also need some program to edit it on the computer with mini dvd, with mini dv you can get by with the pice of crap but free Windows Movie Maker.
Bottom line get whatever camera Evan Byrne has it kick ass!