I'm looking for something fairly cheap so a friend suggested just to get a digital camera, not a camcorder. Apart from taking still and motion images, I'm not quite sure of the difference. pls help. Greetings,
If you could only buy one device to capture your life and the life around you, what would it be? For me, it would be a camcorder. As Robert Allen so eloquently points out, if you were in your great grandmothers burning house and you could only grab one thing, a video of her wedding or photographs of her wedding, what would you choose? Most people would choose the video.
Today more than ever, it a great time to purchase a camcorder. Most digital camcorders perform well outdoors because of good light levels. You might want to get a camcorder that has a good "still picture" Mega pixel level.
So it really comes down to use. Do you have a decent PC or Mac? There are a large number of good video editors for under $100. Are you willing to spend a little editing on the computer? Then a MiniDV tape camcorder will work great.
Don't want to edit with a PC? Then a DVD-Camcorder is for you. It has some basic on-board editing and once you do that, out of the camcorder and into your DVD player.
Take a lot of video of friends and share online? Play it on a PC entertainment system? A Hard Drive camcorder might be just the ticket.
Two areas are left to mention. If you have a lot of older 8mm or High 8 tapes that you want transferred, consider getting a Digital8 camcorder. I have one (but want to upgrade sooner than later) and it works great. The Digital format is the same quality/codec as MiniDV, but the tape is twice the size.
The second area is HDV. You will pay more for this but it will really help keep you future ready! Your great Grandkids will thank you assuming that you archive the video on long lasting media. A sweet consumer camcorder just came out called the HD20 by Canon. From everything that I have read, its a wonderful Cam. (See link.)
Looking for a good deal on camcorders can sometime be found on Craigslist in your area. Never buy one unless you can get some hands on time with it first.
A good online store is B&H photo.
A good brick and mortar store would be Costco - plus they have an amazing return/warranty thing going on. (I love Costco!)
There are a lot of choices... Do your research.
Jeff Still cameras take video at a much lower resolution than video cameras, and not for very long if your short on memory card capacity and trying to shoot at the camera's best picture quality setting. It is really an added novelty on a small device that is primarily made to take still images, which is perfect if taking video (that you probably won't save) just to play around with and share is what you're interested in.
If you're wanting to capture some memories you'd later like to edit on your PC and/or burn to DVD, then a video camera is the way to go. Depending on how you want to share it, you can always compress down the quality of your video for easy transfer, but you cannot improve video that is already compressed to a low resolution.
Deciding on what's best for you depends on what you're shooting and the quality you want, and what you consider to be cheap. Someone might consider $300 to be too expensive. If that seems expensive to you, then settling for a digital camera may be your only option, because you probably won't find a camcorder for under that unless you get a used or display model on sale or find someting on ebay.
If you decide to go with a video camera, make sure it has a USB or Firewire output to allow you connect it to your PC. Not all of the new DVD camcorders have this feature. USB is also more convenient because no matter what the camera, many PCs have a plethora of USB ports, but not many have even a single Firewire port.
A good place to get reviews and compare camcorders is http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Cam... |
