Need camcorder advice.

Ader1

I've never owned one of these. I'm looking for one with many hours of video recording capacity if you know what I mean. I'll be travelling abroad....China and am not sure how often I'll be able to download stuff if at all. Can anybody give me some advice? Thanks.

Mr_Toad

This can be tricky! I have a palm sized Panasonic camcorder with an optical image stabilizer that uses Mini DV tapes that give 60 minutes, I don't know if you can get larger capacity tapes or not.

I know several people who have newer, smaller, a bit bigger than an iPhone, camcorders that use SD Memory cards and are supposedly HD but when I compared their HD output with video shot on my tapes they just aren't as good quality. In fairness the ones I've tried have been at the cheaper end of the market so probably not great quality lenses. My Panasonic has a good quality Leica lens.

I think it's fair to say that the higher the quality of video the bigger the files are going to be. When I download video from tape to my computer the files are huge and I mean huge!

One of the camcorders I borrowed used an 8Gb SD card which gave 120 minutes of recording. I think memory cards are definitely the future but for the trip of a lifetime I'd be reluctant to trust to a cheap camcorder.

I think you are probably looking for a good quality camcorder that uses memory cards and a good supply of said cards.

Don't buy cheap memory cards!

It's not all about capacity, one of the key features is the speed at which the card can write data. Camcorder video streams are big and if the memory card can't write the data as fast as the recorder is sending it you will get dropped frames which means poorer quality video.

When travelling abroad with my digital SLR camera I take a few blank DVDs with me. If my memory cards get full I visit a local computer shop and ask them to copy the data to DVD for me. Anywhere with a computer will do, I've used hotel computers and other places. It's amazing how helpful people can be. I get two DVDs burnt, I keep one with me and I post the other one home. I've never lost a picture yet!

Another option would be one of those portable hard drives aimed specifically at photographers and video users. The have a slot for the various memory cards and all you do is plug the card into them and they automatically copy all the data to the disk freeing up the card for more pictures. They are stand alone and don't need a computer.

Plenty to think about

InsideInsurance

How much in door/ night time shooting are you wanting to do?

The problem with all camcorders, and in particular the HD ones, is their ability to deal with low light. As a rule of thumb, the larger the sensor inside the device the better it will cope as anything else is down to software processing that can and will create its own issues. (its better to avoid a problem than to try and correct the problem later).

Those that record to flash cards are the easiest as you can carry a pocket full of them and just switch them over as they fill up plus its often the quickest way to get them onto the computer afterwards for editing.

Whilst there can be reliability issues, in all my years of photography I am yet to have a single card fail. Most cases of photos/ film going "missing" is user error, in my opinion. At the same time any medium can fail so the ideal thing to do is back it up.

When I went on my big adventure I took a portable hard drive and a handful of cards. Each evening I backed up the card to the drive but kept the images on the card too. The idea was that if I was to end up running out of space on the cards then I could start deleting the cards knowing they were on the harddrive but fortunately it wasnt necessary and I was safe having duplicate copies. These days I would just bring my netbook instead and where I can get free wifi then also back up online.