New to digital camcorders

[mr_banana_pants]

My Dad is planning on getting himself a digi camcorder that takes SD memory card.

He doesn't need some super camera, just a straight forward point and shoot for his holidays. Plus he's on a budget. I don't think he will spend over £150.00 (I realise he wont get the world for that price).

Anyway I have a couple of questions,

1. If shooting at a standard quality, is there a rough guide to how many minutes you would get per GB of memory?
   
2. Do certain cameras have a limit to how large a memory card they can take?
   
3. And any recommendations for a camera? My Dad currently has his eyes on the Toshiba Camileo Pro. But I told him to hold off till I researched first!

Cheers guys

[rhubarbe]

Can't recommend a £150 card camera. They aren't good enough - image stabilisation is lousy.

Recording time depends totally on the bitrate. On my HDC-SD7 at top quality and 8GB card will last about 80 minutes (12-14Mbps). the Sony TG3e reckons to last about an hour on 17Mbps (8GB card).

Some of the toy cameras use 4Mbps so you'll get 240 minutes to 8GB.

For your price you might just get a 3CCD Standard Def SDR-S150 (I have had two of these and I rate them) SDHC cams by Panasonic. You'll only get second hand though on eBay at that price. There are some newer SDHC cams from Panasonic and Canon but these are only SD (standard definition) and have very small single sensors.

I should up your budget or go for MiniDV.

[senu]

Originally Posted by rhubarbe

Can't recommend a £150 card camera. They aren't good enough - image stabilisation is lousy.

or non existent.
Video quality:some mobile phones will probably give it a run for its money
Colours: Washed out?
and
Low light? use outdoors only
Recording codec.. Non standard most likely
An SD card camcorder at that price exists but they would be more like gadgets and can be fund on e-bay
Thee seems to be a perception that you are only paying for features you don't need or cant be bothered with when you pay a little more rather than simply half decent quality
Panasonic has some nice no frills low cost SD card models but they still cist a bit more than this
The disadvantage is that it wont be long before he gets unhappy with the quality and stops using it

I should up your budget or go for MiniDV.

Agree, Actually just up the budget, forget MiniDV if he doesnt want to mess with tape
I saw the Toshiba Camileo featured :It is a fun gadget, he may like it but he may also find himself watching the holiday footage just once ..