Help me with camcorder purchase

HGLTsuperstar

Your mission, should you choose to accept it...is help me buy a camcorder.
Musts: Full 1080 HD, still 8mp or above
Ideal: HDD? Stereo or dolby digital sound
This has to last, not need updating in 1-2 years.
Don't want much do I?

All helpful pointers appreciated.
TIA

staggy

Sanyo Xacti - VPC HD 2000 - about £350
No HDD - SD cards

OK if you want a "pistol grip" (which I prefer). Had mine about 12 months - excellent results

Cons - Low light performance (at this price point there's very few camcorders that handle low light well)
Image Stabilisation is not the best

HGLTsuperstar

Thanks, any more suggestions. Thinking HDD as better recording time etc.
Anyone having a mid-season sale at the mo'?

littlepanther

What's your budget?

HGLTsuperstar

Around the £500 mark or cheaper

bosseyed

I bought a Panasonic HDC-TM10 full HDD camcorder recently and its great - brilliant picture quality and nice and easy to use. Low light is only ok, but during the day its wonderful. Well under your £500 budget too. 8Gb of internal memory so enough for a couple hours of HD footage without the need to expand the memory.

One thing to be aware of with HD camcorders - the footage you take makes a fairly massive file, and most old ish PCs aren't up to the task of converting/editing/playing the footage. My Dual core laptop simply can't manage it and removes frames thus leaving an unwatchable mess - either buy the mini HDMi and output straight to the TV, or burn the footage to DVD.

tomtiddly

Just received the same TM10 as a present recently and it's great. Not got a lot of use out of it yet and had to purchase additional memory and battery for the upcoming holiday but it's easy to use and an excellent camera. Just echoing what bosseyed said

Vuze

The 8MP still photo requirement is quite a tough one.. update us on which model you go with as it seems the Sanyo Xacti model is the only suitable one in that price range.

BillScarab

I've got the Panasonic SD10 which is the TM10 without the built in memory. It's an excellent camcorder but both it and the TM10 are 1080i not 1080p so it depends what the OP means by full1080 HD.

The number of megapixels for still photos is irrelevant. More megapixels does NOT equal better quality photos. Generally stills taken with any camcorder tned to be decidely average compared to a digital camera.