OK, I trust MR folks, so I need a little help. I need to get a camcorder in the next 2, maybe 3 weeks and I need to keep the cost to $500, maybe $550 including an extra (preferably high capacity) battery pack and a good handful of whatever the required recording media to get started with. (I have a case that will do for the time being, so only "extras" I need are battery and media).
Here's the use/requirements:
- Primarily for shooting baby and general home/family videos (I'm not an amateur film maker, probably never will be).
- Must be "wife friendly". That is, small/light enough for her to use comfortably and have a good automatic mode.
- iMovie '08 compatibility is a must.
- Image quality is important to me, but price is the primary concern.
- I'm not interested in DVD-R cams, mainly due to the load times betweej discs, the very small record time, and the size of both holding the media and carrying it around.
- I'm fine with MiniDV (of course), HDD*, and flash storage**.
* to head off the question "what will you do with the video after you download it fromt he HDD"? I'm fine with DVD-R as an archival standard, and I would recompress the video to a high bitrate h264 to store on DVDs. not ideal, but certainly workable.
** Flash is fine, but I'd need to get several hours worth of memory in my budget, so it's not likely a good solution in my case.
Ideally, I'd get an HV20 and just be done with it for a long time. But, between the camera, an extra battery, and a pack or two of tapes, I'm looking at at least $750, which is $200 over the budget.
So, I've also looked at Panasonic H18, GS85, and GS320. I considered the JVC MG255 and the MG555 (though it's a tad out of the price range). Canon seems to be out of the SD camcorder game, and with the low price and success of the HV20 who cam blame them? I'm not usually a huge fan of Sony products, but the Sr42/62/82 seem to have their merits, but also don't seem to offer anything over the competition.
I'm sure there's some I'm missing, buy I'm lost by this point. I'd like to know if anyone has a camera I should add to my list, one I should strike, or one out of the group that you think is a particularly good buy. Thanks for any tips!
Here's the use/requirements:
- Primarily for shooting baby and general home/family videos (I'm not an amateur film maker, probably never will be).
- Must be "wife friendly". That is, small/light enough for her to use comfortably and have a good automatic mode.
- iMovie '08 compatibility is a must.
- Image quality is important to me, but price is the primary concern.
- I'm not interested in DVD-R cams, mainly due to the load times betweej discs, the very small record time, and the size of both holding the media and carrying it around.
- I'm fine with MiniDV (of course), HDD*, and flash storage**.
* to head off the question "what will you do with the video after you download it fromt he HDD"? I'm fine with DVD-R as an archival standard, and I would recompress the video to a high bitrate h264 to store on DVDs. not ideal, but certainly workable.
** Flash is fine, but I'd need to get several hours worth of memory in my budget, so it's not likely a good solution in my case.
Ideally, I'd get an HV20 and just be done with it for a long time. But, between the camera, an extra battery, and a pack or two of tapes, I'm looking at at least $750, which is $200 over the budget.
So, I've also looked at Panasonic H18, GS85, and GS320. I considered the JVC MG255 and the MG555 (though it's a tad out of the price range). Canon seems to be out of the SD camcorder game, and with the low price and success of the HV20 who cam blame them? I'm not usually a huge fan of Sony products, but the Sr42/62/82 seem to have their merits, but also don't seem to offer anything over the competition.
I'm sure there's some I'm missing, buy I'm lost by this point. I'd like to know if anyone has a camera I should add to my list, one I should strike, or one out of the group that you think is a particularly good buy. Thanks for any tips!