Camcorder

aslawrie

I've just had a baby and want to buy my 1st camcorder, i'm not very well clued up on them and was hoping someone can give me some advise on what to buy, and what sort of price i should pay? Cheap is best as it's my first camcorder,

Nile

Hello aslawrie

I'll move your thread over to the 'Techie Stuff' board, where it should get more views and responses.

Hi, Martin’s asked me to post this in these circumstances: I’ve asked Board Guides to move threads if they’ll receive a better response elsewhere(please see this rule) so this post/thread has been moved to another board, where it should get more replies. If you have any questions about this policy please email [EMAIL="abuse@moneysavingexpert.com"]abuse@moneysavingexpert.com[/EMAIL].

Regards

Nile

nej

We bought one the other day to film our baby (now nearly 7months old and doing interesting things now!)

We bought a Sony DVD one for £366. We did buy it from Comet on the weekend for £499, but then found out it was £100 cheaper on their own website! As the Salesperson had lied to me about the battery life (he claimed up to 9 hours when it is actually 90 minutes!) I took it back the next day and said that they had mis-described it to me, which was true. They refused to give a refund at first, but my persistance paid off and they refunded it. All the hassle I went through in persuading them to throw in some blank dvd's with it was wasted though!

I then bought it from shopping4cameras.com for £366, with free next-day delivery. It arrived yesterday but I've not had a chance to play with it yet. The model is a Sony DCR-DVD205 and it's very nice with widescreen recording and a touch-screen panel and stuff. Much better than my old one which was about the same size as those used by the BBC!

movieman

The best 'bang for the buck' consumer camcorder right now is the Sony HC1, but that's over 1000 pounds: it shoots HDTV rather than standard TV format so the picture is a lot better. But if you just want a convenient camera that you can watch on a standard TV then I'd go with nej's suggestion of DVD cameras... then you can always just stick the disk in a DVD player to play and not have to faff around with attaching cameras to the TV with special cables or editing on a computer.

As the Salesperson had lied to me about the battery life (he claimed up to 9 hours when it is actually 90 minutes!)

Sadly, battery life claims are usually optimistic. I know when I bought my DV camera the battery included with it used to claim it had two hours remaining but actually only worked for 30 minutes before shutting down.

EdwardBeckingham

What about cheaper digital camcorders? I have found a few for around a £100 or less, but find it difficult to know the difference between them and the more expensive camcorders. Are there specific things I should look out for?

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductInfoComm.asp?ID=22394

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductInfoComm.asp?ID=20443

http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductInfoComm.asp?ID=21540

Cheers for any assistance.

Edward

aslawrie

I can't really afford a thousand pounds for one at the moment, thanks nej i'll take a look