newbie looking for a camera

[ac-mac]

I am looking for a standard definition camera, and my budget is £200. Would prefer SD card, but if anyone can convince me why I should use miniDV tapes, I would be willing to look into it.

 

[ftaok]

I am looking for a standard definition camera, and my budget is £200. Would prefer SD card, but if anyone can convince me why I should use miniDV tapes, I would be willing to look into it.

Here are my reasons to use tape over SD cards,

1. Video quality is much better with miniDV camcorders over the MPEG-4 based flash camcorders.

2. Media costs less ... although you get to reuse the SD cards, so over time, it evens out.

3. With tape, you have a permanent back-up in case your HDD crashes. With SD cards, you will have to remember to back up your HDD or SD cards.

4. Unless you are working with the latest software, miniDV is more easily editable. iMovie 5 (and later) do support MPEG-4, but there's some sort of caveat that it has to be "simple-profile" or something. Not sure if that's really an issue or not.

5. The miniDV camcorder costs less than a comparable SD card camcorder.

ft