Hello all,
I am looking to buy a MiniDV camcorder to use for family holidays and house parties etc. After doing some research today I would like one with the following qualities:
- Good picture quality in bright and low-light situations with a useful nightmode (I appreciate the quality will not be great, but as long as it is viewable that's fine).
- DV-I out so that videos can be moved onto my PC to be edited, converted and compressed into smaller file sizes and then placed on DVD if desired.
- 20k optical zoom or greater.
- Widescreen 16:9 mode.
My price range is budget at a maximum of £150 (heck I'm a student what can one expect? ) and after much consideration I have filtered through the many possibilities to leave two cams to choose from:
1) JVC GR D720EK (£130)
2) Canon MD101 (£149)
Cams filtered out:
1) Samsung VP-D371W/XEU (Poor quality reports in reviews & forums)
2) Samsung VP-D372WH (Poor quality reports in reviews & forums)
3) Panasonic NV-GS60 (Nice cam, but lacks widescreen unfortunately)
The main difference now is that the JVC has an optical zoom of 28x whilst the Canon goes two better at 30x. I don't think this would have a very significant difference on performance of the two and is not a deal-breaker for the JVC, but would just be a nice little bonus should I go with the Canon.
I have hyperlinked the two remaining camcorder names to their respective official product specs pages and I hope that some of you more tech-savvy people can take a look at the two pages and maybe recommend which one seems to be the better one of the two and why.
Below are links for to some reviews of both cams:
JVC Review 1: Tech.co.uk
JVC User Review: Amazon.co.uk (scroll down)
Canon Review 1: Pcpro.co.uk
Canon User Reviews 1: Ciao.co.uk
Canon User Reviews 2: Amazon.co.uk (scroll down)
As you can see they are both rated pretty well and from the images I would say the Canon is better aesthetically - not that that matters all so much though. The Ciao Canon reviewer is wrong about the lack of a DV-I output which is listed on the official specs link I posted earlier and despite that his review is great.
My only concern is the reported problem on one of the Amazon reviews 'you will hear the sound of the tape recording' and I wonder if this is the thing which means I should go for the JVC. Or would the same problem likely occur with the JVC and would it make no big difference?
I could really use some helping deciding between the two, because as you can see there is not much between them and I don't have the personal experience of either item or the technical expertise to look at the specs and choose which is the best.
I'd really appreciate any advice from people anybody here, maybe you have personal experience of one of the cams or are technically-savvy and thus can offer me some guidance on which model seems to have superior specs/features. Thanks in advance to anybody who takes the time to offer me their advice!
Kind Regards,
John
I am looking to buy a MiniDV camcorder to use for family holidays and house parties etc. After doing some research today I would like one with the following qualities:
- Good picture quality in bright and low-light situations with a useful nightmode (I appreciate the quality will not be great, but as long as it is viewable that's fine).
- DV-I out so that videos can be moved onto my PC to be edited, converted and compressed into smaller file sizes and then placed on DVD if desired.
- 20k optical zoom or greater.
- Widescreen 16:9 mode.
My price range is budget at a maximum of £150 (heck I'm a student what can one expect? ) and after much consideration I have filtered through the many possibilities to leave two cams to choose from:
1) JVC GR D720EK (£130)
2) Canon MD101 (£149)
Cams filtered out:
1) Samsung VP-D371W/XEU (Poor quality reports in reviews & forums)
2) Samsung VP-D372WH (Poor quality reports in reviews & forums)
3) Panasonic NV-GS60 (Nice cam, but lacks widescreen unfortunately)
The main difference now is that the JVC has an optical zoom of 28x whilst the Canon goes two better at 30x. I don't think this would have a very significant difference on performance of the two and is not a deal-breaker for the JVC, but would just be a nice little bonus should I go with the Canon.
I have hyperlinked the two remaining camcorder names to their respective official product specs pages and I hope that some of you more tech-savvy people can take a look at the two pages and maybe recommend which one seems to be the better one of the two and why.
Below are links for to some reviews of both cams:
JVC Review 1: Tech.co.uk
JVC User Review: Amazon.co.uk (scroll down)
Canon Review 1: Pcpro.co.uk
Canon User Reviews 1: Ciao.co.uk
Canon User Reviews 2: Amazon.co.uk (scroll down)
As you can see they are both rated pretty well and from the images I would say the Canon is better aesthetically - not that that matters all so much though. The Ciao Canon reviewer is wrong about the lack of a DV-I output which is listed on the official specs link I posted earlier and despite that his review is great.
My only concern is the reported problem on one of the Amazon reviews 'you will hear the sound of the tape recording' and I wonder if this is the thing which means I should go for the JVC. Or would the same problem likely occur with the JVC and would it make no big difference?
I could really use some helping deciding between the two, because as you can see there is not much between them and I don't have the personal experience of either item or the technical expertise to look at the specs and choose which is the best.
I'd really appreciate any advice from people anybody here, maybe you have personal experience of one of the cams or are technically-savvy and thus can offer me some guidance on which model seems to have superior specs/features. Thanks in advance to anybody who takes the time to offer me their advice!
Kind Regards,
John
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