Camcorder?

[suzydisney971]

My DH and I are in the market for a camcorder but have no idea what would be the best to get for the right price. Our first child will be arriving in August and I wanted to get camcorder to film the baby (not the delivery, gross) as he/she grows up and to take to WDW and other vacations. Any suggestions? Something with lots of memory and long battery, I think. Also I would love to be able to record fireworks/parades at night. It has to be user friendly since I will probably be the one doing most of the filming. My DH is technologically challenged.

 

[donald&daisy]

I have been researching as well. For Christmas I recieved a Canon DC210 which recorded to Mini Dvds. I hated it!!! I want something that I can load onto my computer and do simple editing. This was not the camcorder for me. I would suggest if you aren't wanting to do any editing and wanting a point and shoot, finalize, and put in dvd player then you might like one that uses DVD media. I am now in the process of looking for a camcorder that uses MiniDv (tape). This is an older media and is much more friendly to those who want to edit their films.
I am not talking about major editing, I just want to cut scenes together, maybe add some titles and music. I found the Canon to be so user unfriendly ( I even bought software to convert the files, but the audio and video never synced up). This is b/c the DVD media will record the audio and video separately. This is probably too much info. Some places you may want to check around are : camcorderinfo.com They have excellent reviews and forums. And cnet.com Good luck!!! For the record I am now going to purchase a Panasonic PV-GS320.
Sorry, one final cautionary note. Make sure you know the return policy of wherever you buy from. Best Buy gives you 14 days! Make sure you like it and it does what you want before the exchange/return time is over.

 

[gwtw428]

Hi,
we bought the Sony digital handycam. It was about $500 at Target onsale last year. It is great!! No dvds, no tapes! It is very very easy to use! It comes with a docking station that allows you to download your videos to your computer to edit or you can burn a dvd with just 1 button!! It is also small and light. We love it! No complaints!

 

[Angrypenguin]

Normally I jump into threads that involve consumer gadgets since I'm a gadget geek...but in this case I have no idea! I don't know anything about camcorders, but I've been bouncing the idea of getting a camcorder in my head lately, so any advice given here would be great for me as well.

 

[CJMickeyMouse]

We buy Sony mini-DV camcorders. We are on our second now, as they are used (and abused) for filming sporting events.

I would not buy the dvd, mini-dvd or harddrive versions if you are looking to edit at all.

JMO.

 

[suzydisney971]

I'm not sure if I would want to do some editing but I might if I happen to film something that doesn't belong. I'll keep everything in mind. Once you finish, do you just download and then burn onto dvd? My computer is super slow so I don't know if it would be able to do the download and/or burning. So I'm not sure if I should just stick to the basic dvd. This is all so very confusing for me. I can handle my digital camera, that's how technologically advanced I've gotten so far, which isn't much. Keep the suggestions coming. Hopefully with all this knowledge, I'll sound intelligent when I finally break down and get one.

 

[Mic]

"Santa" brought me a JVC hard-disk camcorder for Christmas. I love it! I have quite a collection of 8 mm tapes(dating back to oldest daughter's first birthday...she's almost 20!) that need to be transferred to DVD, so hubby bought himself a "media center" computer over a year ago to do it, but he hasn't started yet All my new footage can be downloaded directly to the computer, so I haven't been nagging him to do anything with the old tapes lately. My 2 previous camcorders were Sony, because they were easy to use and held up well. We went from a Sony handycam 8mm to a Sony handycam hi 8 mm. Hubby insisted the hi 8 was better, but I honestly did not notice much of a difference. We were happy with both Sonys, but the hard-drive JVC was $100 less than the cost of the Sony($500), so I went with the JVC. So far, I love it. It is small enough to take anywhere, and not having to carry tapes is nice. The only thing I wish it had was a longer-lasting battery. An extra one is pretty expensive($70-80), but so were the extra Sony batteries we bought years ago. It does charge pretty fast, though, so it's not a big deal.