Whats the Best Camcorder for £500?

[eastman3000]

As the subject guys what would you recommend?

Things I am considering are:

Memory format - i.e. Hard drive or flash memory?
HD?
Make - They all look good!
Ease of use.

recommendations appreciated.

[mmace]

depends exactly what you're after, I had the same budget 2 weeks ago and did some research and I bought the SR10, I ended up going for this because of the 5.1 audio and a few other reasons

list us what exactly you're after or what you're wanting to do

[CoSzaro17]

Are you happy with the Sr10? Nobody is answering my topic about it -.-


and unfortunately I wouldn't know, I'm in the U.S. so I'm guessing over there £500 is about $900-$1000 here, so yeah the Sr10 from what I've seen of it looks nice, if you want more memory for longer recording time you could go with the sr11 or sr12(all Sony) They are the same as the Sony sr10 but with expanded memory on the Hard Drives.

[redsox_mark]

Originally Posted by CoSzaro17

They are the same as the Sony sr10 but with expanded memory on the Hard Drives.

No, that is not true. The SR11 and SR12 are the same (except HDD size). The SR11/12 have a larger sensor, different lens, mic and headphone inputs, higher resolution stills, and a larger/better LCD compared to the SR10.

[CoSzaro17]

Oh, I didn't know that, thank you for correcting me.

[Frank@UK]

I kinda asked the same question and was pointed in the direction of a few cams. I wanted to upgrade to a smaller cam with half descent still capture capabilities. Seem to boil down to these...
Panasonic SD9 Small/light 10x zoom, takes SDHC memory cards, Pre Record function I like too.
Sony SR10 Maybe just too heavy/big, 15x zoom, 40Gb HDD, also takes fairly expensive Memory Stick Duo.
Sony HDR TG3 Pocket size cam, 10x zoom, expensive memory sticks again.
Canon HG10 10x zoom, 40Gb HDD, stills to MiniSD card.
Canon HF100 12x zoom, takes SDHC memory card.

Cheapest is the Panny and I am leaning towards that one anyway

[mattr]

Originally Posted by Frank@UK

I kinda asked the same question and was pointed in the direction of a few cams. I wanted to upgrade to a smaller cam with half descent still capture capabilities. Seem to boil down to these...
Panasonic SD9 Small/light 10x zoom, takes SDHC memory cards, Pre Record function I like too.
Sony SR10 Maybe just too heavy/big, 15x zoom, 40Gb HDD, also takes fairly expensive Memory Stick Duo.
Sony HDR TG3 Pocket size cam, 10x zoom, expensive memory sticks again.
Canon HG10 10x zoom, 40Gb HDD, stills to MiniSD card.
Canon HF100 12x zoom, takes SDHC memory card.

Cheapest is the Panny and I am leaning towards that one anyway

I feel your pain trying to choose. I'd also add a few more pluses/minuses

SD9 - the best stabilizer, no point having a sharp picture if it's blurred from shaking. Battery life is a bit shy of 2 hours. Handy as you can't buy spares. Picture has a red bias, makes things look a bit 1960s to me.
SR10 - poor low light, slightly worse than TG3 from shots I've seen. Great daylight pics. I've got lots of spare Sony batteries that would fit it.
HG10 - can't save to SD card, means I need to lug a windows laptop with me (probably can't use my Asus eeee with it's lovely linux). It was £400 on empiredirect for a while. Not anymore. Battery lasts a bit less than 2 hours.
TG3 - battery lasts about 1 hour. It's tiny.
HF100 - the biggest issue I have is it's £330 in the states, £550 in the UK. So Canon can **** *** etc. Battery lasts about 90 minutes.

It's a case of best picture vs smallest size vs cheapest.

[mmace]

mattr:
I've found the low light on the SR10 comparable to my old HC5, I don't have a problem with it and there's not much noise at all

Frank@UK:
you must be new to camcorders to say the SR10 is too big & heavy! plus you don't have to use the memory sitck, I don't, I have it set on the highest quality and the 40Gb holds just under 300 minutes

I was torn between the SD9 and the SR10 (SR11 was just out of price range) when I was looking around, but having 40Gb with me all the time swayed it for me plus I can expand with memory sticks if I ever need to (but doubt I will)

[redsox_mark]

All those models have things going for them; depending on your preferences any are a valid choice.

I wouldn't single out the SR10 for low light performance; it's low light performance is similar to the SD9.

[mattr]

Originally Posted by redsox_mark

I wouldn't single out the SR10 for low light performance; it's low light performance is similar to the HD9.

Do you mean SD9 ? The SR10 works out cheapest overall for me just because I've already got spare batteries, and the picture is very clean too. I've always fancied the SD9 because of its size and stabilizer, but I think the CCD vertical steaking on bright lights would get to me though.

[redsox_mark]

Sorry, yes I meant SD9.

[numbercruncher]

There are quite a few reviewed by PCPro this month. However, their reviews disagree with much I have read elsewhere. In particular: no reference to poor controls or HDMI placement on HDC-HS9 and they claim better low-light for the HS9 rather than HF10 - not so according to camcorderinfo.

Oh and the HF10 doesn't "make up for its increased price" compared to the HF100 - it's 110GBP more when 16GB cards cost 35GBP.

[mattr]

Originally Posted by numbercruncher

There are quite a few reviewed by PCPro this month. However, their reviews disagree with much I have read elsewhere. In particular: no reference to poor controls or HDMI placement on HDC-HS9 and they claim better low-light for the HS9 rather than HF10 - not so according to camcorderinfo.

Oh and the HF10 doesn't "make up for its increased price" compared to the HF100 - it's 110GBP more when 16GB cards cost 35GBP.

Very interesting that. They liked the HS9's stabiliser. Maybe I should put a higher bias on that feature. I've not seen a review of the stabiliser in the SR10 but I notice the UX20 has been reviewed in camcorderinfo and that imager and lens seem identical to the SR10. The UX20 stabiliser got 60% reduction, less than some of Sony's electronic stabilisers.

Might have hijacked the "best camcorder" thread a bit there.

(If anyone wants to just send me a free hi-def camcorder that would help me choose :-))