Solid-State Camcorders - worth it?

[mattDP]

Hi,

I've never owned a camcorder before, but I'm thinking it's about time to take the plunge. Before I'd done any research I was leaning heavily toward wanting a solid-state camcorder but having looked at some reviews, I'm now very confused.

The first solid-state camera I initially focussed on was the JVC GZ-MG70 (about £550) but www.camcorderinfo.com were pretty down in the mouth about it. I then looked at the Panasonic SDR-S100 which was a lot more, but camcorderinfo seemed to think it was just as bad, and it's a good £200 more to boot.

Annoyingly, www.simplydv.co.uk thought they were both fantastic and gave both 5/5 to further confuse the issue. Camcorderinfo seems to give more in-depth reviews though, so I'm more inclined to trust it.

Camcorder info seem to be recommending the JVC GZMC500 as an alternative solid-state cam but I'm not bowled over by it's measly 4Gb storage and I don't know how expensive extra "microdrives" are likely to be.

So the questions are:
* Which of those three is best? I'm looking at using it mainly for leisure, but it'd be nice to have some manual controls to play about with in case we get more deeply into it.
* Should I really not be looking at solid-state and look at a miniDV or somesuch instead?
* Which review site can I trust the most?
* Is 4Gb really enough storage in a solid-state cam?

Cheers for any advice.

[saw2]

Hi

Was in a similar position to you just before Christmas and went for the SDR-S100 in the end - haven't regretted it so far.

I think you'll always get the advice that the mini-DV will give you better quality but my life is tape free and I wanted to keep it that way plus I have always been willing to compromise the image quality slightly and go for ultracompact - I've been through pretty much every model of the Canon Ixus still digital camera range - on the basis that if it fits in your trouser pocket (which the Panasonic does) you're always going to take it with you.

It is my first camcorder and I did start out with a £500 budget and thought I'd be going for either a DVD or HD device but was happy enough with what I saw of those reviews to know it was OK for me. In the end I got it for £729 delivered which was quite surprising, even though I buy a lot on the net, given that it is £999 in my local Panasonic store.

I have bought an extra 2GB SD card, need to get a spare battery and that will do for what I need in terms battery life and recording time for day trips and holidays - I also have an 20Gb Archos media player which I take on longer trips to dump stuff from SD card anyway, and my still camera and phone use the same media.

The other benefit, apart from the size of the thing, is how easy the transfer to computer is - I used it first time on Boxing Day, shot about 10 mins of stuff, and had a DVD with made of it within quarter of an hour of getting home. The bundled software is actually pretty good too which is normally not the case.

It's not going to suit everyone and I only really have second hand experience of other cameras so hard for me to compare - with regard to sufficent recording time the panasonic set on SP (standard) mode actually records 50 mins onto the 2Gb card (rather than 25 mins for XP mode) so a couple of those will do for me - but I'd say if you want small form, point and shoot, with easy transfer to DVD and don't mind spending a bit more then it's a good way to go.

I'd say the simplydv review goes a bit over the top but would agree with it more - the camcorderinfo review seems to mark it down on items which are not an issue for me i.e. lowlight performance, that you can't plug extra things like mics into it (sort of goes aginst the idea of ultracompact) and proprietrary batteries etc., and that they didn't use the software (in terms of transferring to pc which sorts out the naming) properly. I'll admit to being a "gadget freak" so it does also appeal to me on that level and I'm never going to be doing a "pro-shoot" - for me it's about recording and sharing the moment as quickly and easily as possible.

As an aside, here are some stills taken with it (50% resized):
Boxing Day stills

[MarkE19]

As stated, if all you want is an easy to use point & shoot camcorder then these may well be good enough for you. IMO the PQ is not good enough to replace my miniDV camcorder and I always keep all my origional tapes, even after creating a DVD from the recording. However with the solid state cams you have a real problem with archiving as you can't afford to keep the memory cards with the recordings on, DVD is not a safe long term archiving media and HDD space on a PC is too expensive to keep all your video on.
Also these camcorders use very high compression rates to record the video onto small memory cards. This causes lots of problems if you want to do a fair bit of editing of what you have recorded. Also if on holiday and you run out of space for recordings new memory cards are expensive compared to a DV tape.

Don't get me wrong, this may be a good solution for you. But you need to look at all the pros & cons of the different technologies and see which format will suite you the best.

Good luck with finding the best solution for you.

Mark.