Camcorder Model Decision

[mrWatson]

Hello,
I am an italian guy who will start in September a Film & Digital Video Course in London and have been making videos for a while now.
I own a Samsung Ego which I find really good for shooting on holidays since it is smaller than my mobile (nokia N90 ) but since I switched to Mac last month I'm having problems with the codec etc.. and furthermore I would like to add some quality to my shooting and some battery life too (half an hour is reaaallly bad).
I use Final Cut for the editing and would like to buy a Camcorder that will give me editable videos without 1000s of conversions steps.
Since I NEVER use my shootings without editing them I'm definitley not looking for a DVD Handycam.
I like the HardDisk storage of my Samsung Ego and don't really like the idea of carrying along tapes with me, but I'm guessing that with the HD storage there will always be conversions problems.
I don't want to go too professional / expansive right now since I'm sure that during my first year I will understand which Camcorder is best for me and will then make a big investment. I just want something that will work fine with my Mac, with a good image quality and not too expansive. (maybe I'm asking for too much, don't know.)
As you may have gathered I'm quite confused by HD, HDD, MiniDV etc...and hope you could help me making the right decision.

Thanks

 

[cgratti]

High Def cameras can cost you a lot of money. And unless you watch the footage from the camera itself connected to your tv then you need a high def player for your tv and a burner to burn the HD DVD or Blu-ray disks, which also costs a ton of money.

I was in the same dilemma, I went with the JVC MC500 3CCD video camera, it uses a microdrive to store the footage. A lot of people dont like the MPEG2 format but I feel the quality is great for what I want it for (family, vacation, and that kind of video). The files are easily transferred to my mac and then I just need to edit and burn the film to DVD.

It really boils down to what you want to spend -vs- your needs -vs- how indepth you want to go with it. Don't waste months looking, find 2-3 nice cameras form reviews and pick one. You will not find a camera with everything you want so stop looking, the cameras with everything you want is probably in the $3,000-$4,000 range.

If I were you I would look into either a MiniDV or Hard Drive based camcorder. Panasonic, Sony, and JVC all ake good camcorders. Remember you get what you pay for. I would get at least a 3CCD camera, the image quality on most of them is pretty nice and they can be had for under $1,000. I paid $699 for my 3CCD camera.