Best camcorder for around $800

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Best camcorder for around $800
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flag steezymcgee
Posted: Jun 8, 2008 at 17:58 Quote
There are probably about 100 threads on this but i can't seem to find them. i am looking for a good camcorder for around $800 it has to be hdd or something similar, like no messing around with tapes and especially dvd, i have already considered the canon vixia hf100(probably the one i'm going with but i wanna find out more experienced people's opinion) I know it has avchd and i understand that is is sort of like hdd but different please tell me if i'm wrong, also if you know the best place to buy a camcorder please tell me.
flag jo-biking
Posted: Jun 9, 2008 at 4:01 Quote
canon hv20
Harddrives are dumb. Tapes are better.
flag kpeek
Posted: Jun 9, 2008 at 23:23 Quote
jo-biking wrote:
canon hv20
Harddrives are dumb. Tapes are better.

Unless your filming in HD. Then tapes are pretty much useless.
flag jo-biking
Posted: Jun 10, 2008 at 14:39 Quote
kpeek wrote:
jo-biking wrote:
canon hv20
Harddrives are dumb. Tapes are better.

Unless your filming in HD. Then tapes are pretty much useless.

how do you figure?
flag kpeek
Posted: Jun 10, 2008 at 15:01 Quote
jo-biking wrote:
kpeek wrote:
jo-biking wrote:
canon hv20
Harddrives are dumb. Tapes are better.

Unless your filming in HD. Then tapes are pretty much useless.

how do you figure?

Well you could buy HD tapes, they are just 30 dollars each, probably not worth the effort and money, when its much easier to use Hard Drives, but thats only with HD quality stuff. Like you I am more traditional I use tapes as well.
flag dm-rider
Posted: Jun 10, 2008 at 17:27 Quote
canon HV20

www.bhphoto.com
flag jo-biking
Posted: Jun 10, 2008 at 19:39 Quote
kpeek wrote:
jo-biking wrote:
kpeek wrote:


Unless your filming in HD. Then tapes are pretty much useless.

how do you figure?

Well you could buy HD tapes, they are just 30 dollars each, probably not worth the effort and money, when its much easier to use Hard Drives, but thats only with HD quality stuff. Like you I am more traditional I use tapes as well.

HD tapes are pointless and a waste of money. The only real difference between a sony premium and a sony hd tape is the lubricant inside. Apparently its supposed to help prevent dropped frames. Which is weird, considering i have ran about 20 tapes through my hv20, and i havnt experience a single dropped frame.

plus im a huge fan of always having a physical backup of your footage, as apposed to a harddrive that could crash very easily.

again, to the poster:
HV20 or HV30
flag steezymcgee
Posted: Jun 10, 2008 at 20:53 Quote
you are all saying i should get tapes, but ive filmed with those cameras and it saw a whole lot of frame dropping and it gave me all the footage on it in 1 big video which i had to cut and then edit, which i really didn't like, its much easier to use a hdd camcorder which gives you the different shot, sepperatly, then you can save a lot of time, that really in my mind, didn't need to be used, my friend has a hdd camcorder(a handycam) and i really like it. His a whole lot better than than the minidv that i used at school, if somthing i said is wrong or could change my mind please tell me i really don't know a whole lot about the differences between them except that hdd are quicker to edit but typically minidvs are better quality film(from reading other camcorder threads) plus i really would like to have hd Please respond quick im hoping to get a camcorder before my whistler trip which is on the 25th, also i havent heard anything about the canon vixia hf100 it looks good and has a lot of good features, i know it works on imovie and it seems like a really good camcorder for the price, if someone has the canon vixia hf100 please give me a review on it and whether or not i should get it
flag SpikeX
Posted: Jun 11, 2008 at 11:39 Quote
I have the Sony HDR-SR12 and it's an amazing camcorder. It records in full 1920 x 1080 HD, and it has loads of features (Effects, Smooth Slow Motion, Hybrid Recording, Face Detection, loads of settings, etc.), 5.1 Channel Zoom Mic, Huge HDD (120GB), 3.5" LCD and more. It is however much more than $800, but I have always had Sony cameras and I can gladly recommend you one. I have used many manufacturers of camcorders, but the Sony come out on top IMO.

You can get a Sony HDR-SR10 for $899 (I know it's a little more than your budget but still...). It comes with a 2.3MP ClearVid CMOS Sensor, shoots in full HD - 1920 x 1080, takes 4MP still images, Comes with Sony Face Detection, Hybrid Recording (Records to HDD and Memory Card if you want), 40GB HDD, 5.1 Channel Zoom Mic, 15X Optical and 180X Digital Zoom, 2.7" 16:9 Widescreen LCD Touch Screen Display, and so much more...

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&productId=8198552921665291476
flag steezymcgee
Posted: Jun 14, 2008 at 19:09 Quote
well im sure i want to get an hdd camcorder, but now i just want to know which one i should get, i am strongly concidering the canon vixia hf100, but am open to other possibilities(has to be hd) also please don't try to tell me to get a tape camcorder, because i really don't want one,
flag caseface
Posted: Jun 14, 2008 at 20:07 Quote
i'm telling you to get tapes
because they will give you better quality
basically a tape camera will give the image a much more film like appearance
and as for being a a pain to change and such
you don't really neeed to change tapes, you can use the same one
get a tape camera, thats where you will get quality
simple
flag steezymcgee
Posted: Jun 14, 2008 at 22:44 Quote
ok so first off you are saying that hv20 will have better quality but i compared both the end products of the vixia hf100(the camera i really like) and the hv20(the camera you really like) and I can say that i didnt see a difference in quality, so i don't find that it would be worth the trouble of having the tapes. and the reason i don't like tapes or dvds is not the messing around with tapes but after you capture the footage when you try to edit it you get a big block of all the different shots mashed togather. at school in our cinematography option we were given tape camcorders because of our budget, and it was a little bit of an inconvenience finding our shots in the tape, but also the frame dropping was awful, my friend has a hdd handycam, and when we took shots with it to make a project, the quality was way better with his camcorder, plus it was a whole lot easier to find your sepperate shots, and when you went to edit the footage, it was a whole lot easier to edit because of the different shots being sepparated, also when i talked to my cinematography teacher, she said that i deffinatly wanted a hdd camcorder because tapes and dvds were limited in their editing capabilities, also because i would prefer to get right to editing instead of spending about an hour (that how long it took me) splitting the film apart into sepperate shots.
flag SpikeX
Posted: Jun 15, 2008 at 9:15 Quote
Yeah, tapes are really a pain to use, as are DVDs. I've had a DV, DVD, and HDD camcorder and HDD really is much easier to use.

With my Sony HDR-SR12 HDD camcorder, it detects peoples faces automatically when you're shooting (and focuses and adjusts settings to make sure they look good), and it stores every face it records so that you can actually search for all the footage with a particular face in it (hard to explain). The footage is extremely easy to find, even if you have 24 hours of clips on the HDD at once.

DV (Tape) for me would be the second best. The quality is good, and the tapes are a great archiving system in themselves, but they don't really last long and you have to have a lot of them if you want to shoot longer clips or can't upload the footage to your computer once the tape is full. It's also a PITA to search for clips, and it's harder to upload to a computer because with an HDD or DVD camcorder the clips are already divided and you can choose to upload only the clips you want.

DVD camcorders for me are the worst to get. My dad got one in 2004 when they were still new. The advantages are that discs are relatively compact and the clips are sorted out and divided for you (like on an HDD camcorder), and also that you can just finalize the disc and put it directly into a DVD player / TV or computer. However finalizing takes a while and it's annoying to do every time you want to play the DVD or upload a clip to the computer (keep in mind you have to unfinalize the disc if you want to record on it again or play it on the camcorder). You also have to format DVDs once when they are new, something you don't have to do in a DV or HDD camcorder which is all ready to go. The worst part, however, is the price of DVDs and the storage capacity. A Double Sided DVD cost us $35 each, and we could only record 20 mins of standard definition footage on one side from an old 1MP camcorder(that was at highest settings; it could record about 60 mins of lowest definition footage on one side). Changing discs every 20 mins of recording time, plus formatting the new one, is a time-consuming and aggravating process. The small recording time also means that you have to have A LOT of DVDs if you can't upload the footage to a computer all the time.
flag emarciniak
Posted: Jun 15, 2008 at 14:32 Quote
dropoffsandjumps wrote:
after you capture the footage when you try to edit it you get a big block of all the different shots mashed togather.

There's a solution for that. It's called DV Start/Stop detect, read up on it...
flag steezymcgee
Posted: Jun 15, 2008 at 16:32 Quote
i'm sure i want a hdd camcorder i just don't know which one, the sony you were talking about, in the comments of the review it said that the camcorder doesn't capture high motion shots very well, and dh being a fast sport i dont really want that, but as i have been saying all along what about the canon vixia hf100, i have seen a whole lot of positive reviews and not onebad one, so if anyone has one please tell me how it works for mtb shots, please respond quick im leaving for whistler soon and am wanting to have a camcorder before then Quote="SpikeX"]Yeah, tapes are really a pain to use, as are DVDs. I've had a DV, DVD, and HDD camcorder and HDD really is much easier to use.

With my Sony HDR-SR12 HDD camcorder, it detects peoples faces automatically when you're shooting (and focuses and adjusts settings to make sure they look good), and it stores every face it records so that you can actually search for all the footage with a particular face in it (hard to explain). The footage is extremely easy to find, even if you have 24 hours of clips on the HDD at once.

DV (Tape) for me would be the second best. The quality is good, and the tapes are a great archiving system in themselves, but they don't really last long and you have to have a lot of them if you want to shoot longer clips or can't upload the footage to your computer once the tape is full. It's also a PITA to search for clips, and it's harder to upload to a computer because with an HDD or DVD camcorder the clips are already divided and you can choose to upload only the clips you want.

DVD camcorders for me are the worst to get. My dad got one in 2004 when they were still new. The advantages are that discs are relatively compact and the clips are sorted out and divided for you (like on an HDD camcorder), and also that you can just finalize the disc and put it directly into a DVD player / TV or computer. However finalizing takes a while and it's annoying to do every time you want to play the DVD or upload a clip to the computer (keep in mind you have to unfinalize the disc if you want to record on it again or play it on the camcorder). You also have to format DVDs once when they are new, something you don't have to do in a DV or HDD camcorder which is all ready to go. The worst part, however, is the price of DVDs and the storage capacity. A Double Sided DVD cost us $35 each, and we could only record 20 mins of standard definition footage on one side from an old 1MP camcorder(that was at highest settings; it could record about 60 mins of lowest definition footage on one side). Changing discs every 20 mins of recording time, plus formatting the new one, is a time-consuming and aggravating process. The small recording time also means that you have to have A LOT of DVDs if you can't upload the footage to a computer all the time.[/Quote]
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