Please help me chose a flash camcorder < £150

[FaB*Bo*Peep]

Hi all,

Recently my son has been having fun making lego animations and other videos with his pc and webcam and uploading them to Youtube. Anyway, he has now decided that he would like a camcorder for Christmas and I have therefore been doing some research but to be honest, do not feel that I am getting very far. I did look at the Canon FS100 which always appears to do well in reviews but even with the current Canon cashback offer this would still be £200.- and my son feels that it is too expensive and he would therefore be afraid to use it which would of course defeat the whole point.

So the criteria are :

(1) Must be within the budget of £150, (any more and I might as well just go for the Canon anyway and pretend it was on offer or something).

(2) Must be flash memory type.

(3) Must record in widescreen format.

(4) The recorded footage must be of reasonable quality, although I appreciate that at this price level it is not going to be comparable to bluray, (just as long as it offers a noticeable improvement over the quality and resolution of a webcam then he will be happy).

(5) The recorded footage must be in a file format that can be easily handled in common applications such as Windows Movie Maker / Nero and must also be suitable for uploading to Youtube.

I did spot the Praktica DVC 5.1 HD which looks good on paper and receives good reviews but I am not sure about the "MOV" (Quicktime) file format, I think editing this without first converting it could be a problem ?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks in advance

[senu]

Get the Canon..while you can
Anything other than that would be cheap and not that cheerful
and
Your wish list is rather ambitious , although there are "gadgets" that will promise all that and more and fail to deliver

WMM has limited file support, even the mpeg from the Canon is not supported by it

You dont say how old your son is but its nice of him to think about your pocket
However if it is cheap but has too many compromises , he would end up not using it too , for all the hassle

[FaB*Bo*Peep]

Thanks Senu,

Will Nero directly handle the files from the Canon ? I have read something about simply renaming them with the .AVI extension.

Also, if the MOV files from the Praktica were converted using RADTools into a usable file format, any idea if this would degrade the footage at all ?

[nheather]

I was looking for something similar but I've now been persuaded to spend a lot more money and look at HD.

Anyway the cheapest I found was the

JVC GZ-MS100

You can get this for £168 from Comet using reserve and collect (i.e. reserve it online and then go and collect and pay for it at your local shop).

There is then a JVC cashback scheme which should get you £30 back bringing the equivalent price to £138.

From my research it would seem that all of these Standard Definition Camcorders perform pretty much the same. The very small sensor (1/6") enables you to get massive zooms with a compact lens - which is why you get 35x-42x optical zoom in a very small camera. The downside is that small size means that they can't collect a lot of light so the picture quality degrades when the lighting is anything less than perfect - so filming outside on a bright day will produce higher quality results than filming inside.

But to get better indoor performance you really need a bigger sensor, which needs a bigger lens, you get less zoom, bigger camera and more expensive.

Cheers,

Nigel

[paulcollins10]

you can get the FS100 for about £185 from dixons or jessops using online voucher codes and then the £30 canon cashback

[A n d r e w]

For what it's worth I'd go for the Canon over the JVC. Amaz*n has the FS100 for 189 nicker, or 159 after the Canon rebate.

Amazon.co.uk: Canon FS100 - Electronics & Photo: Electronics & Photo

Andrew.

[senu]

Originally Posted by FaB*Bo*Peep

Thanks Senu,

Will Nero directly handle the files from the Canon ? I have read something about simply renaming them with the .AVI extension.

Also, if the MOV files from the Praktica were converted using RADTools into a usable file format, any idea if this would degrade the footage at all ?

Nero will handle mpeg file from the Canon , even if they are called *.MOD ( which I dont think they are)
Im rather less sure about the Pracktika MOV files though
It may be that quicktime Pro or any suitable video converter ( there are a few around) can convert tham as well

[FaB*Bo*Peep]

Thanks for all the help guys.

In the end we had narrowed it down to a choice of 3 and my son took a shine to the Samsung MX20 and we ended up getting a good deal on this from currys which included a £10 gift card and £30 accessory kit which contained a case and spare battery, (which meant that the camera itself cost just £100).

I came slightly unstuck in that even after all of my research I still managed to buy a camcorder that none of my existing software will support, but having said that, the size, weight and features of it are absolutely perfect for what my son wants it for and I am convinced he is going to have a great deal of fun with it.

This story continues with my post about finding a suitable editing package here :
What's the best video editing software for...

Thanks again for all of the advice

[senu]

Originally Posted by FaB*Bo*Peep

Thanks for all the help guys.

In the end we had narrowed it down to a choice of 3 and my son took a shine to the Samsung MX20 and we ended up getting a good deal on this from currys which included a £10 gift card and £30 accessory kit which contained a case and spare battery, (which meant that the camera itself cost just £100).

I came slightly unstuck in that even after all of my research I still managed to buy a camcorder that none of my existing software will support, but having said that, the size, weight and features of it are absolutely perfect for what my son wants it for and I am convinced he is going to have a great deal of fun with it.

This story continues with my post about finding a suitable editing package here :
What's the best video editing software for...

Thanks again for all of the advice

Great,
Ironically I made acquaintance with the Samsung only on Tues 11th at a Samsung Product awareness launch and had a little hands on with it but not long enough to comment on software as we only took some footage around London South Bank Centre and London Eye and returned the camcorders
I would normally use one of many software I have but would be unable to help : Still you seem to have got there through trail and error
I will do the write up in a day or 2 but look foward to hearing any user experiences you have