Any such thing as a great camcorder/still camera?

[momshark]

I would love to get a new camcorder for Star Wars weekend as there are many activities that need to be recorded. Only a few requirements: I'd like a one handed camcorder which I can also get stills onto, with auto everything. Oh, and I'd like to be able to pop the whole thing into my computer or DVD player and see the pics right away. I will be alone with my DS8 and will be carrying everything and filming while keeping a hand on him. I know, I need 8 arms.
Why are mini DVDs much better than regular sized ones? or should I put everything on a stick?
I am so camera challenged. Please help!!
Thanks!!

 

[Anewman]

Nope not really.

But IMO Samsung has a neat idea, they have a combo camera with two lenses and two sensors. One take all video and one takes all the stills. Too bad Samsung has never been GREAT in either area.

 

[Kelly Grannell]

Anewman beat me to it. What he said is absolutely correct.

 

[we-luv-mickey]

Well, I dont know much about cameras, but last year I bought a Sony Cybershot DSC-M1 for the simple fact that I was going to WDW alone with 2 kids and didn't want to keep up with 2 cameras. I thought it took really good videos. The still camera was also pretty good, but it definitely isn't a professionals camera. It does not take very good night pictures and does not have a good zoom, but it worked fine for taking pics of my kids with the characters and videos of the fireworks and parades. Everything is saved to a Memory Stick and you will need one with at least 1.0 GB because the video takes up a ton of memory. Like I said it is not a professionals camera by any means but it served the purpose for my trip last year and sounds like it may be all you need to. It was $500 at Circuit City.

 

[wekhogan]

Oh, I am so disappointed about the Samsung. I LOVED the fact that it records to a CF card - it was just too good to be true....

 

[momshark]

Thank you all for your input. I ended up with a JVC hard disk camcorder. It has 20Gigs of hard drive for 4 1/2 hours of taping ultrafine video or 9 hours of normal. I can switch over to still pics at the flick of a button and those can also go on the HD or onto a memory stick. About $600 at Best Buy. I will then burn the movie to my CD and it will play in the DVD player (the software came with it). I also purchased the larger battery. It is small and lightweight. Oh, and has image stabilizing and nightalive (slower shutter speed) recording options. I will let you know how it goes.

 

[Kelly Grannell]

Just so you know that HDD camcorder also uses MPEG-2 compression.

 

[momshark]

IS MPEG2 going to be a problem? I don't know the significance of this, could you please explain. Thanks!

 

[Kelly Grannell]

The answer can be viewed on a thread I started:

Sticky: Brief camcorder information

 

[momshark]

Oh, thanks Kelley. After reading your info and checking out a few reviews of the JVC HDD I have decided to return the JVC, squeeze out another couple of hundred $$ and get a Sony instead. Now, what is the difference between the DVD and the miniDV? Do I get more recording time with the DVD? Do either of them take a memory stick that might record longer? Can I put only video on the DVD and stills on the stick?
Thanks for all of your info, but I do need it explained in the very simplest of terms as I don't get all of the technical stuff. Thanks for being so patient with me.
Lesley

 

[Kelly Grannell]

With miniDV you'll get top notch quality for about 60 minutes. To achieve a similar (but still a tad lower than miniDV), with DVD you can only get about 30 minutes (maximum). Now if you want longer recording time on DVD, you can have up to 90 minutes, but the quality will suffer tremendously at 90 minutes, will suffer rather greatly at 60 minutes.

Memory stick is just too expensive to record movies. A 2 Gb Memory Stick will hold about 30 minutes of close to (but not quite) miniDV quality.

You can choose to store the photo to Memory Stick. however, be forewarned that to this day, there is still no satisfactory digital camera/camcorder combination. They do really well on one side and just okay (or worse) on the other side, or just okay on both sides.