Hi,

I am currently in the process of looking for a camcorder to buy (and have never owned one before). My budget is up to £500 but if there was a camcorder with only slightly less functionality around the £300 mark then this would be OK.

Looking through reviews etc on the web there seems to be a wide variety of camcorders and I am struggling to decide what to go for.

I will mainly use the camcorder for holidays and indoor work. One of my hobbies is tae kwon do and it would be useful to use the camcorder to video my training (typically under flourescent light - any issues?).

I understand that some of the cheaper cameras are not good in low light so would prefer something that is good indoors (although if there is negligeable difference under £500 then so be it).

Funcionality is more important than size.

Having read a previous thread it seems that the Canon MVX 250i may be very good. How does this compare to say the panasonic GS120? How does it compare to slightly cheaper models such as the Canon MV8XX range and the JVC GRD93/GRD290. Can't find much on sonys but I presume they have comparable products.

I would also apprecaite recomendations for accessories such as Compact Tripod (needed for videoing the tae kwon do) and for the PC a good DVD burner and hard disk. Also for video editing what sort of hard disk storage/RAM would be the minimum you would require and what is a good editing software ( Do the cameras come with freebie software?).

One final question it seems that firewire is recomended as the best connection. However is USB2 just as good? ( I am just thinking of the number of PCI slots I have left on my PC).

Apologies for all the questions but this is a whole new world to me!!!

Thanks

[wicket]

I have just bought the Sony DCR-HC18E handycam from Makro for £235 which is an absolute bargain. It is last year's model I believe hence the Makro price but it does everything I want it to, was £450 in Argos Autumn Winter 2004 catalogue, has a load of good reviews on the Amazon site. The only drawback is you need a Makro card to get in the store.

[MarkE19]

For video editing I would recommend 512Mb of RAM, but 1Gb would be better!
As for HDD, any modern drive will be plenty good enough spec. Get at least 120Gb (well under £100) and only put your captured video files on it, do not install any programs and this includes the editing software. Install this drive as the slave on the primary IDE channel with the boot disc as master, with DVD etc on the secondary IDE channel. Make sure DMA is enabled in device manager for the drives.
If you have Windows XP then you have the very good Movie Maker editing software. Instructions for useing it can be found at www.papajohn.org
If other than XP then you will need to buy editing software. I can recommend Ulead Video Studio 8 as a stable and well featured package. Pinnacle Studio 9 is also very good, but many people find that it keeps crashing. Also look at Sony Vegus. All should have trial downloads so you can try them before spending money.
Many camcorders are supplied with some software, but this will not allow full quality AVI capture & editing. It is normally designed to capture still images from the camcorder.

Firewire is the only way to connect the cam to PC and capture at full quality. USB2.0 is just not fast enough, even though it is in theory faster than FW it can not sustain the full speed needed. Many modern PC's will have firewire (aka ieee1394, iLink, DV port) on the motherboard. Look for ieee1394 in device manager.

Good luck and welcome to this great, but very confusing at times, hobby. Let us know how you get on and feel free to ask any more questions that you come up with.

Mark.

Thanks for the response. I will look to purchase all my gear today, its going to be the canon MVX250i. My PC is a little dated (runs ME) so will need to get a firewire PCI card. I will also demo a few of the editing packages to see which I get on best with. I think I may also get some RAM as I only have 256 ( have to check if there are enough slots). I was thinking of buying a 200Gb external disk (so I can transfer between machines), I've seen some on aria for about £100.
On a further point are there any good camcorder magazines for beginers?

[videoman]

"Digital Video" magazine is a good bet at present.

Still not purchased camera as had last minute indescision due to reading review magazine. The 2 cameras I need to decide between are the Cannon MV-X250i and the panasonic NV-GS120. I am leaning more towards the panasonic but have some concerns. This is the way I see the pro's and cons:

Canon has 20X optical zoom and the panasonic only has 10X,will I ever really need 20X? Shoulld the panasonic be ruled out because of this?

The review seemed to think that the panasonic was not that good in artificial light however this could be relative to its natural light performance. The canon however is meant to be rasonable in artificial light, again this could be relatively speaking.

Does the panansoinc support 16:9 aspect? I believe the canon does.

The panasonic has telemacro which could be useful but not sure if the canon has this.

The main and final point Is the fact the panasonic has 3CCD. Does this really make such a big difference. The 3CCD are acutally 3 X .8 megapixels so surely this means its got 3 copies of the same image at .8 megapixels so how is this better than a 1 CCD that is 1.23 megapixels? in this case the canon would be better. it is clear however that 3CCD must give an advantage..its just a case of how much.

and my final thought is it worth waiting for the replacement models of the cameras as I bellieve the MVx250i is to be replaced by the MVX350i and the panasonic NVGS120 will be replaced by the NVGS200

Thanks

More Confusion... I've just read the spec on the sony DCR-HC90 and for what would be just over my budget I could get a camera with 3 megapixels. Surely this must be better than the 3 X .8 mp on the pnanasonic. This must be better than both the panasonic or canon?

[thebrummy_one]

Whereas 3 CCDs are normally better than 1, because they each handle 1 primary colour, it is the pyshical size that, I believe to be the governing factor. Both lens size and CCD size. The tools of this trade is 'light'. The more that is available in the camera, the better the picture.
I would sugest you take account of how big the CCDs are. I believe the panny to be 1/6" and the sony to be 1/4" (possibly 1/3") The lens size, again these are figures I remember seeing, not one's I have researched in the last 5 minutes, panny 30mm, sony 37mm. Going on my simplistic equation, I believe the Sony to come out tops.
PS. The number of pixels is less of a relevance for video as there are only so many that can be reproduced on a standard analogue TV. The pixel count is more to do with the stills facility.
Brum