[alisoncam]

I am looking for a new camcorder to take hiking to Peru in October and want one with hard drive and card so that I can take some still also (save having to take camera and camcorder athough i realise that the camcorder pics wont be of same quality as my camera )- does any one have any preferences between these two -I have a budget of approx £500 - 600. Any coments would be appreciated. thanks

[A n d r e w]

The HG20 looks like it produces the sharper pictures of the two, and is also better in lower lighting as it has one medium-sized CMOS sensor while the HS100 has three small CMOS sensors. Canon HD camcorders in general have a very good reputation around here - which is not to say Panasonic are crappy (not the case at all). The HS100 has been superseded by more recent Panasonic offerings such as the HS200 and HS300.

Bear in mind that hard drives have an altitude limit. Not sure exactly what it is - check the specs. But this could be a factor if you're trekking in high places.

A hard drive does have the advantage of allowing you to record for hours before running out of memory, but the same end can be achieved with a memory card camcorder. Memory cards are relatively inexpensive. So long as you have somewhere safe to keep them, if you have a number of medium-sized memory cards then all your eggs aren't in the one basket should you be so unfortunate as to experience data corruption for whatever reason. Also, unlike the hard drive option, there's no altitude restriction on using solid state memory.

Therefore, you might also want to take a look at Canon's HF200, which by all accounts is a fine camcorder. Panasonic has a number of memory card camcorders, e.g. the SD200, SD300, TM200 and TM300 (the "SD" models record to removable memory cards, while the "TM" models are a twin-memory option, with built-in solid state memory as well as having the option for removable cards). But I think that the Canon has the larger sensor.

[a_jam_sandwich]

Hi Andrew,

I am also looking at the HG20. You mention that a solid state memory camcorder the HF200 it better for altitude etc with would be applicable to myself, can you tell me what the difference between the HF200 and the HG20 are apart from the fact of a hard drive and being a little bit lighter.

Reading trusted review it gave the HG20 10 out of 10 for image quality but not the same for the HF200 is the image processing internals different?

Many thanks

Andy

[A n d r e w]

The HG20 has a larger sensor than the HF200, but whether the image processing is different I'm not sure - comparing the specifications on Canon's website should clarify the differences.