I am looking to buy one or the other which is better value for money By definition, a camcorder is a video camera with a recorder, and a video camera is just a camera without an external recorder or monitering system. However, in today's everyday speech, they mean the same thing.
For better quality, look for the size and active pixels of the CCD. Also look out for claims of large amounts of zoom. Optical zoom is all that really counts, because digital zoom just interpolates the image from the sensor, making a less clear image. 12x optical zoom or more should be fine. The most improvement in quality is having 3 CCDs. This produces the best color reproduction and overall quality, but usually involves a pretty good price jump. Camcorders record videos with sound whereas cameras capture snapshots.Camcorders record the videos on diskettes inserted into them and they have good storage capactity.Some digital cameras also have the capacity to take videoa but their capacity is limited and cannot capture audio. A Camcorder (of any type) means that it has a mechanism (tape or disc) for recording the video.
A Digital Camera may or may not have a recording mechanism built in. | 