Sony Mini DV camcorder

thor

dazza32 wrote: »

lol tape you may aswell pay an extra £50 and buy a dvd camcorder 10000 times better tapes are crap

Really?
Perhaps if you are a newbie and not concerned about editing or quality.
Minidv tape stores video in a more uncompressed format than dvd discs. They use the DV format which is better than the mpeg2 used by dvds and once uploaded to your pc you can do all sorts of things to the footage.
If I wanted convenience and lower quality then maybe I would shell out the extra dosh for a dvd camcorder but I want the versatility and picture quality of DV so I'm going to stick with tape for the forseeable future.

niceblokejohn

My Sony HD camera records onto tape. I wouldn't buy a disc based camcorder myself, as I'm more than happy with taking the footage off the tape and putting it onto dvd myself.

Difference is, I get to choose the quality that it gets burnt to a final disc as, not the camera. So I can have 1 hour's worth of footage on one full sized dvd, or spread over 3 if I want to keep the quality high.

Also:

- I can record 62 minutes of footage per tape in "standard play" mode (not the 30 mins I've seen on dvd camcorders)

- I can carry as many blank tapes with me on holiday as I want - I'm not limited to e.g. 20gb of storage (which you would be with a hard disk based camcorder).

So not one easy, single solution for everybody.

theturnip1977

Hi,

Was in my Sainsbury's today (Redditch) and noticed they have dropped the price of these camcorders down to £100.

I had the last one but there may be some left at this price in other stores.

I couldn't resist at this price!!

mrme

theturnip1977 wrote: »

Hi,

Was in my Sainsbury's today (Redditch) and noticed they have dropped the price of these camcorders down to £100.

I had the last one but there may be some left at this price in other stores.

I couldn't resist at this price!!

Oooh now that IS a bargan, I'm going to get onto my local store to see if they have any left & what price they are .Off on holiday on Monday so would be good Thanks for the update

idnotfree

Went to my local sainsuburys. They had 3 in stock. But it was for 149.99. I told that its sold in Redditch for 100 quid. But the manager was adamant that he wont do a price-match.

Thats surely wrong, isnt it? Any thoughts, if I can persuade them to do a pricematch with the other store?

Thanks

MyUserNamesTaken

£149 in my local store, with loads left. It's not a promo price, by the way. It will remain this price until it sells out (or so my GM Manager contact told me).

MyUserNamesTaken

Had a little play with mine (not much you can do without a tape!). Seems to be a great little camcorder. Ordered an NP-FP90 battery off Ebay for £8.30 all in. Grabbed a Sony Bag off Ebay for £8.00, and some tapes from the tape website someone posted a link for on this thread. Sold my old Sony Hi-8 camcorder (with bag, extra battery and all the tapes) to my dad for £125, so I'm reasonably happy.

theturnip1977

I was told by one of the managers at the Redditch store when these were at£149.99 that they would probably drop the price before they sold out. Thats part of the reason why I didn't get one at that price.

I actually got it for £100.49 the other day. There were 2 display cases there but they had trouble even finding the 1 that I wanted.

I am guessing that the reductions are down to the individual store managers discretion.

I have noticed that there have been some good reductions on the electrical goods the last few weeks in our store!!

Brockyman

I recently bought the HC35e version of this camera. It is exactly the same but with a cradle to sit it on. The quality is fantastic. I have a DVD recorder with a DV input and the recorder controls the camera when copying onto DVD and retains all the information put on by the camera. The battery that comes with the camera will last about an hour and a half without the screen or about an hour if you use the screen. I always use the viewfinder for recording as I find it less distracting, easier to handle and it uses less battery.
If you do not have a firewire input on your computer you can get a card for about a fiver or you can use USB2.
Personally I would go with mini DV rather than DVD as the quality is higher on mini DV. This is not an opinion, it is fact. DVD camcorders heavily compress the image which makes it quicker to load on a PC but will probably have a poorer image when transferred to a DVD for watching on a TV.
Another problem I have heard of is that if any data becomes corrupt on a DVD it can render the whole disc unwatchable, on a miniDV tape it would become a few pixels for a short moment on screen.
Incidentally, I have found that Sony tapes are the best. I have used TDK but found that they are more prone to data break up, very little but annoying.
Another plus with Sony: I have a friend who works for Comet in their central repair centre in Leeds. He told me not to buy Panasonic as they get more of those in for repair than any other. Sony on the other hand they get about 2 or 3 a year at most and they go back to Sony for all the repairs anyway.
Hope this helps,
Ian.

Kentish

Just to add my tuppence-worth to the discussion on recording formats: as others have already mentioned, each of the different formats have pros and cons and so it depends on which factors are most important to you. For me, my choice of format is dictated by:

(1) Video quality
MiniDV does compress the video less than DVD and hard drive formats so the video quality is better (in theory at least). Here's an old review for a Canon miniDV camcorder which puts numbers on this:
"...the compression level for video footage recorded to MiniDV cassette tape will be the standard 25 Mbps rate. This slight compression is what currently makes the MiniDV format superior to the heavily compressed footage (8 Mbps) recorded with hard disk drive and DVD format camcorders."

(2) Robustness
The tape-recording mechanism is quite rugged and will withstand the odd drop without much problem. This is probably less so for DVD and hard drive recording mechanisms. Older technology, but tried and trusted!

(3) Cost
MiniDV camcorders are cheaper.

Finally, when I was looking to buy a camcorder this time last year, I got a refurb one from the Canon Outlet on eBay. For example, they seem to have the MV890 at regular intervals and they generally go for between £100-£115 (plus £5.99 p&p). I've bought a few cameras from that site too and can vouch for them.