[nickcbritten]

Please Help! I am considering replacing my ageing Sony TRV 18. I mostly use it to record my son's cricket and rugby games. I've been looking at a new Panasonic nv-gs500 4 meg stills, I mostly take stills at the cricket too boring to tape the whole game, but I've seen an advert for a second hand Canon XM2 which would be around the same price. Would this be a better camera for the rugby? Any advice would be welcome

[senu]

The Canon XM 2 does not do great stills but it is a mid size very high quality (non-pro) camcorder. For a 3 CDD camcorder ( or indeed any) it has very excellent lowlight abilities.

The Panasonic is much smaller , more portable and although by no means a poor relation of the Canon for PQ, not quite a match for it.

It will do b y far better stills even if its low light abilities are a bit less able: This is only an issue if the games are late evening and as your TRV18 was able this should not be any problem for the Panny.

For your Sons rugby game I imagine portability ( and unitrusiveness) would be a big plus but the Canon has "street cred"
I dont think IMHO that for the fast moving game any of these 2 MiniDV camcorders has an edge although the Canon has a max faster shutter speed and combined with its better low light abilities will give a better PQ in more demanding conditions

Most importantly both are significantly better camcorders than the Sony TRV 18.

The Canon is a much better camcorder but is it the (better) one for you?
The smaller size and better stills capability may swing if for the Panasonic in that context.
There are always ( reasonably priced and capable) portable digital still cameras to record stills if you decided on the Canon
HTH

[toadoftoadhall]

If you mainly take still, why not use a stills camera. Makes more sense.

If going for a video camera,, get one with the biggest optical zoom you can for cricket. Better than taking a stills with a lower zoom and blowing it up.

toad

[nickcbritten]

Many thanks for your comments.

[nickcbritten]

I've mostly used a Sony DSC W5 for stills of the cricket, the game goes on too long to get the whole game on video. I've got some good pics but the zoom isn't up to much from the boundry. My Cam will zoom in better but only 0.9 meg. Stills: Canon has 1.7 but massive zoom x20 and Panny 4 meg with 12x zoom. I think that I have to decide which sport to favour to help my decision maybe canon at full zoom would allow for a better pic than the panny.

[senu]

The Canon and a stills camera with "big" zoom would be ideal. The Panny is a good compromise though but it would be hard to get the best of both worlds in one affordable body!.
Go into a Jessops and handle both to see how each one feels
Ideally:
Any budget DSLR with a 70- 200mm zoom would sort you out for range and sharpness in for sports.
Even a decent ( affordable) camcorder eg:Panasonic gs 180 would then suffice for Video . Nothing wrong with 500 although the 400 before it was (also) a better camcorder

Still on Panasonics, the optical Zoom on the lower Pannys ( gs 27-57) is a whopping 30X!