I want something to use for a variety of applications such as underwater filming, hiking and lanscape shots. I would like a High Def camera but want something farely easy to edit on my Powerbook G4 with the best quality possible. Any recommedation would be greatly apperciated and if anyone has experiece in housing selection that would be great to. Thanks a ton for any help.

[felix2]

Hi, have a quick search around lots of recent threads have hopefully got some stuff of interest which might help you (if you haven't already read them). What sort of budget are you looking at?

HDV ( = hi def on tape) is generally easier to edit on PCs than AVCHD ( = hi def on hard disk or memory card), although AVCHD is by no means impossible with a pretty high spec PC, and the latest iMovie on Macs apparently copes well with AVCHD - see this thread.

For HDV consumer cams, the Canon HV20 (around £700) or previous model HV10 (cheaper), and Sony HC5 and higher spec'd HC7 (£700-£750) are worth looking at. Sony also make underwater housings ("sports packs") for their camcorders which I've seen good reports on (think the HC7 takes the SPK-HCC, anywhere up to £200!).

Thanks for your reply. Budget isn't really a question, I just want something that I will enjoy working with and won't be absolite in a year and that is why I was thinking that AVCHD was that way to go. I have a PowerBook G4 with iMovie on it and would like to get a High Def Hard Drive so when shooting underwater I won't have to open my housing to switch Tape on the boat. Everyone is telling me it takes for ever to edit with the compressed media so I don't know which way to go. thanks again