Camcorder Recommendation

[PTS]

Hello!

I am wanting to purchase a new Camcorder for family and RC. What is a good camera that is stable, good sound, and has good ability to film RC planes? I have no clue what to buy. Also easy edit and upload features.

Please any suggestions...

[XJet]

It's been a while since I bought my last camcorder so my exact model-knowledge is a little out of date, but here are some tips.

First, if you think you'll be filming any "action" footage (with lots of action and rapid movement -- such as RC model fly-bys) then you should get a camcorder that offers a "progressive" frame mode.

In plain-speak, what this means is that instead of building up each frame of video from two separate "interlaced" frames that are taken a 60th of a second apart, you get both frames taken at exactly the same time.

The effect is that you don't get the nasty ragged edged fringing and horrible wavey lines that you may have noticed in some videos that have been converted to MPG/WMV files. It also means that you can get *much* better still-shots from your video footage if you want to.

The next issue is the number and size of your CCDs - those are the elements that convert the light into electrical impulses which can then be amplified and messed around with to create the digital data patten that ultimately gets written to tape or disk.

A 3CCD camera will give much brighter (and more realistic) color, especially if the light levels are not optimal.

The downside of a 3CCD camera is that you usually get smaller CCDs than in a 1-CCD version. Smaller CCDs mean poorer low-light performance (generally resulting in "grainy" footage in dim lighting).

You also need to consider whether you go MiniDV tape or hard drive.

Obviously hard-drive is a whole lot cheaper and potentially more reliable than buying a fist-full of tapes but MiniDV isn't dead yet.

Brand?

Well most of the name-brands are pretty good but there is often a difference between the pro, pro-sumer and budget offerings that make it difficult to say "brand X is better".

I used to be a Sony fan but switched to Panasonic for my last camcorder because Sony seemed to be moving in the direction of "gimmicks before good core performance" and I just wanted the best quality image for my money. I wasn't disappointed but the pendulum may have swung since then.

Ignore hype like "digital zoom", that's just useless. A good optical zoom of at least 10x is important and a decent image stabilization system (ISS) is also a must if you're going to be shooting from anything but a tripod. There are two types of ISS, optical and digital.

Optical uses a cunning system of accelerometers, servos and mirrors to ensure the effects of handshake or other things is significantly reduced. The digital system works somewhat differently and can produce unwanted sideffects, such as jerky movement when you're panning from right to left or up and down. I prefer optical -- try both and see what *you* think.

Most camcorders also boast still-image capabilities these days so they can also take regular digital-camera pictures to a memory-stick. Don't get too excited about the mega-pixel ratings they claim, they use cheating tactics such as interpolation to come up with these silly numbers so your 4mp camcorder will not produce images anywhere near as good as a decent 4mp still-camera. This capability is handy however, if you just want web-quality images without the hassle of also carrying a regular digital camera.

There's a whole lot more I could say but I'm really no expert, although if you've got any specific questions then feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.

[CSpaced]

I'm a little late posting here but here goes.

I was just recently in the same situation. I found that when you buy a decent camera (under the $1k price tag) it wont come with any editing software, so you have to budget that in. For about $80 you can get an awesome editor from Sony called "Vegas", I highly recommend it.

As for a camera, I ended up going with an HD format camera from Canon called the HV-30. It records onto MiniDV tapes (I picked up a pack of ten from costco for $20) in HD. From what I've been reading the digital version of the HD format isn't quite up to par with the quality of the more traditional HD format that records to tape.

The camera is small and light but really packs a punch as far as quality goes, it can record in either full HD, HD30FPS, or HD24FPS with cine mode. HD30 is useful if you upload a lot of video to somewhere like Youtube as it automatically compresses your video to 15 FPS so the quality loss is small. Its an incredibly versatile camera which is great for shooting the family baseball game or full on R/C huckin.

You can check out some of the HD video I shot with it on Vimeo.com here, nothing fancy - it was the first time out with the new camera and my buddies first time out with his Dietrich extra. If you don't have highspeed internet access you will get a very choppy video stream as there is a lot of data coming down.

[VKGT]

Anything HD now days... If you get an SD Camera you will regret it later