Camcorder suggestions please ?

[RhodanZA]

Hi,

I'm looking for a camcorder that can offer a great picture, I'm not worried about still shots as I have a digital camera for that. Budget max of £500. Could someone please advise ?

I was looking at a Canon MVX 350I today, is it any good ? Can anyone recommend anything else ?

[MarkE19]

I suggest you have a good look through this forum at all the reported problems with Canon camcorders - there are a fair few and some are serious enough to require expensive repairs to faults that Canon are well aware of, but deny there is a problem.

As for the good cams that get regular recommendations then look at the Sony & Panasonic ranges. I suggest you go into a shop and actually play with a few as what feels good to handle to one person could well be too small etc for another. Once you have it narrowed down to a couple of models then I'm sure we can advise you further.

Let us know the type of use - holidays, parties etc as low light recording can be a real problem with all digital camcorders.
How will you view the recordings? Will you want to edit on a PC, and perhaps create your own DVD's?

Mark.

[RhodanZA]

Ok I have read about some Canon problems since posting this on other forums. I have been looking closer at the Panasonic models, but not sure which one specfically, I guess I'll need to select one to fit my budget of £500.

I want to use it for holidays, and at night when I return to South Africa and go on holiday to game reserves and do night drives. I will be using a PC to edit, and possibly creating dvd's for family.

Any suggestions then on specific models I can look at ?

[MarkE19]

Well I don't know any of the current camcorders available as mine is about 5 years old - and still going strong

With a quick search I came up with 8 possible Panasonic models Here ranging in price from around £400 to £600. Take a look at them and see which appear to offer what you need.

You say you will be doing recording in low light conditions, therefore you should look at single CCD cams as they are better in low light. The down side is that the picture quality will not be as good in normal lighting conditions. Other things to look for are larger CCD and a bigger lens as both will let in more light. The ability to manually set the cam may well be of benefit here as well. Auto focus in low light can often be very poor.
As you say you are looking to edit on a PC I would also advise that you look at getting a cam with DV-in enabled so you can copy the edited footage back to a new DV tape for archiving as a DVD will not last that long. If you think that you could want to capture from a VCR or any other analogue device in the future then AV-in is another feature to look out for. This will allow the cam to convert the analogue video & audio to digital to be captured via firewire.

Happy searching,
Mark.

[RhodanZA]

Thanks for the help, greatly appreciated.

[Maddog]

I bought the Canon MVX350i recently and I think its great.
Highly rated when reviewed on Simmplydv .