Which type of camcorder

choccyface2006

My partner is looking to buy a camcorder. We are not sure about mini dv because they use tapes so we are worried about the quailty and feel it might be best to go for a hard drive or dvd one.

What are the advantages of each?

Can anyone suggest a decent one, the budget is about £300?

Many thanks!

Sarah

vansboy

I'm looking, too!

& I'm a novice, so I'm happy to be corrected!

From what I can see, the DVD is easy, if you just want to point, shoot & are happy with 1/2 hour of filming & not going to do any editing (as it's a bit more awkward, on this format). But you'll end up with lots of discs, I'd think!!

Hard drive - this is what I was thinking as best, but while you get loooooooooooong filming time, on lower quality settings, it is much less, though, on higher quality. You still have to transfer/store the content, so, possibly an external hard drive, for PC?

Plus, reading up on things, this format is already catching out Sony, as they have LOADS of current model to sell, while the next models are ALREADY made & waiting to be dispatched.

So it looks like tape, as it's a VERY good quality recording, cheap enough to keep the master, as well as easier to edit & make a new copy, to share. You won't fill up your PC, with un edited/stored stuff.

They're easy to hold, not too bulky & good prices.

Look at Canon MD160 - John Lewis is £299 (2yr gurantee), but on Pricerunner, around £230ish. This is my current favourite, as I've always been more than happy with Canon cameras.

Hope this helps!!

VB

techexpert

I have a JVC GZ-MG21ek, with a 20gb Hard Disk Drive, it records for hours! and its quite cheap at around £300, and the transfer to pc is very fast

Millionaire

choccyface2006 wrote: »

We are not sure about mini dv because they use tapes so we are worried about the quailty and feel it might be best to go for a hard drive or dvd one

Sarah

DV tapes is regarded as the best quality as it Digital Video over DVD and Harddrive due to the compression used on DVD and Harddrive to get more recording time out of them.

A one hour DV tape uses around 13GB of data which is alot more than what the DVD's use.

Obviously if you are going to convert your filming to DVD at the end then it will need to be compressed and converted anyway.

I would personally go for a DV Camcorder or a Harddrive Camcorder as they are easier to use to edit footage than a DVD camcorder.

techexpert

But With DV there is all the hassle of rewinding tapes, finding lost tapes etc

go for HDD

unrich

Amazon have a good deal at the mo, 10 sony tapes for £10.99. If there's something else you want too they'll be supersaver free post.

The quality also depends on the camera. Partner has spent lots of money on a broadcast quality second hand Sony. It uses miniDV and the quality is stunning. The Sony has three CCD sensors each picking up a different colour. Our cheap Canon mv880x is smaller and has a single CCD. The quality is not as good but still acceptable. The canon cost us £350 a year or so ago.

If you can spend, as much as you can afford. If you can get a camcorder with 3 CCD. A friend advised me to do this and I ignored him. Looking at the 3CCD quality I wish I had listened.

sco0ter

I have had a Mini DV for 3 years now.. I have recorded everything from my wedding to my daughters first steps. Making DVDs for around 2 hours and the quality is excellent. I would rather stick with this over Hard drive because of the simple fact that I can go on holiday and record as much as I want as the tapes are always easy to get a hold of and My bag for the camcorder holds up to 15 anyway. If I run out of tapes I can always buy more so kind of like unlimited capacity.

All that coupled with a decent video editing software (I use Pinnacle Video Studio 11 now) and there is no hassle transfering to PC. Ok it might take a little longer but my stuff is kept on the original tapes and stored out the way until all editing and burning is done in case of any hardware failure. I actually still have all my original wedding tapes and the first 2 years of my daughter still archived away. I actually got the wedding out to re edit when I got the new version of Pinnacle as I was a complete novice the first time and I had made a few mistakes. The tapes were still in excellent condition with no degredation.

After the re edit of the wedding we tried it on our 42" plasma and the quality is brilliant. There is no pixilation or anything.

sco0ter

techexpert wrote: »

But With DV there is all the hassle of rewinding tapes, finding lost tapes etc

go for HDD

Why is rewinding a tape a hassle???. My camcorder can rewind a full tape in less than 60 seconds.

Marty999

I have a Canon mini DV camcorder and was very happy with it until I saw my brother-in-law's new Sony DVD camcorder. This is much smarter with touch-screen menu and controls, and you can go instantly to the chapter you want to watch rather than have to find it by winding the tape through.

But he can only record 30 minutes on a disk and I can get 90 on a tape (long play). So I guess it's down to personal taste at the end of the day and what's most important to you.

choccyface2006

Hmmmmm...theres alot to think about here. Thanks everyone.

We were thinking, mini dv TAPE = Lesser quality & more bulky,but from whats been said the quality is very good (he has a 42in plasma too so its quite important to get good picture quality) also being able to record so much more is very apealing, we don't want to be switching dvds all the time and they are so much cheaper.

We have a massive external hard drive so storage is not a problem.

I will show my partner this thread and we'll have a think about it this weekend. Thanks you again!

Sarah

lee634

Don't go for the HDD camera if it becomes faulty yourup a creek with no paddle, think about a camera with firewire connection which most dv cameras have, these transfer to PC a lot quicker than USB 2