Purley

I am thinking of buying a camcorder to use when I go to England later this year. My Mom is having her 90th birthday and I thought I should at least record the event!

Anybody have a camcorder? Anybody got any recommendations of what to buy or what not to buy? I looked at a JVC but a review said it did not have a USB port. What can you NOT do with a camcorder that doesn't have a USB port?

Of course I recognize that as with all technology - by this time next year it will be out of date. My son has a camcorder already - its about 9 years old and he hasn't used it for about 6 years. Its sitting in its case in my laundry room!!

George-Ang

Hi liz, give your mum my best, a camcorder that has a USB port means you can directly upload the images to your pc and do things like email it edit it and so on, with no USB port this can be done but it takes a lot of work having it transfered to cd. hope this helps.

MarkG

The best bet is a DV camera that has a Firewire (Sony call it 'iLink') port. A lot of PCs these days have built-in Firewire, and both Macs and PCs come with free but very basic video editing software. So you can shoot on the DV camera, capture it on the PC, cut out the junk, then burn it to a DVD or dump it back out to the camera by Firewire and copy to VHS.

iaink

USB is to downlaod still images to your PC, like a digital camera. Firewire IEEE1384/ ilink is all the same thing and is to transfer video, with sound to your PC where you can edit it, and burn DVDs if you have a fancy enough PC. USB also lets you use it as a webcam, but there will be no sound and the quility will be reduced. Firewire is the way to go.

To future proof your investment pay the extra for a MiniDV format camera, with the firewire output. I have a Sony and am very happy with it. I test drove a few different cameras, and bought the one that seemed to respond fastest to changes in the light intensity, and which had the most reliable autofocus. Try a few and see which you get on with best, no point buying the cheepest one if you never use it again because you dont get on with it.

Good luck, have fun!

Iain

George-Ang

NOT True i have a fuji finepix digital camera that also records mpeg. USB......... but you are right in what you say Ian, fire wire is the way to go, and if you doet have firewire it is easily sorted by a pcmcia card on a laptop or a pci card on a PC.

iaink

Anyway, the important thing for Liz to look for is the MiniDV format, rather than the older VHS, Hi8 and digital Hi8 formats out there.

Editing on the PC is nice to have, but not strictly necessary ( I only recently got there, and am still trying to get on top of the endless miles of footage of our daughter ) Any MiniDV camera worth its salt will have a Firewire port. Ease of use is probably the most important thing, otherwise it will just gather dust as an expensive paperweight.

After than I would rate speed of response, and lastly additional features like built in digital still camera capabilities. If you want pics to print out any digital camera will comfortably out perform a video camera, but that's not what a video camera is for.

As liz suspects, this years new cameras will not be hugely better than last years, so maybe you can save a bit of money by getting a soon to be discontinued model, as long as you are happy it will do the job. WHen I got mine a few years ago I went to future shop and tried a few out, I was amazed at the difference in performance between similar looking and priced Canon JVC, Samsung and Sony models, for me the Sony was a clear winner, it was slightly more expensive, but a friend who has real expensive $5000 commercial camcorders for his business was well impressed by the preformance for the money. He really appreciated the manul focus override, because sometimes the autofocus hunts in poor light, so the thing you really want to see is never in focus unless you tune in manually. Thats not something I would ever have thought of, but I use that feature a lot now. Anyway, all food for thought.

mikejw

Hi Liz
try this site as it will point you in the right direction for the best price in shops in the Uk.Also contains reviews.
Mike

Purley

I had figured out that what I should get was a minidv format. My son already has one of the bigger older ones and I certainly don't want to be lugging that to England with me. Walmart had a big, by today's standards, Samsung that had PAL and NTSC, but again - I want something small. It would be good because then I could record the movies on VCRs over there, as well as here. It would be so nice if the whole world had the same format!!

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/

That is a site I found, but the only trouble is that it doesn't have reviews of the latest cameras. Their biggest criticism seems to be the camcorders are not very good in low light - i.e. indoors - at least the lower priced ones aren't.

For the cheapest camera, it recommends a JVC-GR-D33, but I think that must be a last year's camera because I can't find any for sale here.

I had looked on eBay and just about all the cameras that were for sale in Canada were 10x optical zoom, whereas all the cameras this year seem to be 20x or even 22x. So there you go - in one year the zoom has doubled.

I won't buy a camera from the States because I would probably get dinged for customs duty. I refuse to buy anything from the States that involves UPS because they charge almost as much for customs brokerage as you pay for the item.

I am looking at paying less than $500. There are a couple of JVCs at Best Buy, which seems to be as cheap as anywhere.

iaink

Hi Liz,

Dont worry about the 10x 20x thing at all, and ignore "digital zoom" altogether. Most of the time for what you are trying to do the main frustration will be not being able to go "wide" enough to fit the whole family in. Higher zoom numbers mean shakier shots at the extreme end of the range. My professional friend advised that if the subject is too small in the frame, then you need to get closer to them, rather than zoom in 10x from afar. If you try zooming up to high levels, you just get a shaky jerky shot. 10x is plenty unless you are trying to film a kid on the other side of the soccer field, or an osprey from the other side of the river, and in either case you would probably need a tripod to keep it steady.

Low light can be a problem, as its not always practical to increase it. Thats where a fairly sensitive camera is an advantage, and manual focus helps. I would still try a few in the flesh before deciding. I decided against the really small ones as they were fiddly to use, and harder to hold steady.

Purley

I dont know of anywhere that will let you try them out. I suppose I could always buy one from Best Buy or Future Shop - try it out and take it back if I dont like it. I hear what you say about the little tiny ones, but I was hoping to get something small that wasn't too heavy to haul around.

What do you have?

iaink

Any of the big block stores should let you try them out in the store, so you should at least get an idea whether it will work for you. I couldnt get on with any of the small "vertical" style ones. I would be very suspicous of a store that wouldnt let you try them out in fact. I have a Sony DCR TRV18, its a couple of years old now. Really not that heavy, despite apearances, but its all relative I suppose.

One thing I did later on was buy a larger capacity battery. This will be handy if you are heading to the UK and might not be able to recharge easily. Cost another $170 for a large one (but that sony for you ), but now instead of charging it once a week almost for an hours and a bits worth of recording (those flat screens use a lot of energy, often when they say stuff like 4 hour battery life, thats through the viewfinder only, and will be much less with the LCR screen going!) With the top line battery I could easily tape for 6 or 7 hours with the viewscreen on, plus I have the original battery as a backup now. Oh well, one step at a time, might want to find one that will charge or operate directly with 120 and 240V supply if you can?

Good Luck

Purley

The CAA or Best Buy sell converters for charging Canadian electrical things in England. Best Buy costs $39.95 I believe. I can always recharge it overnight. We're staying at my sister's. I always travel light. I quit taking checked luggage. I found I took a huge suitcase full of clothes I never wore.

I can always do laundry and borrow jackets etc. from my sister or my Mom.

I'll have a look on eBay - there was a TRV19 for sale for about $375 Canadian the last time I looked.

aahtuk

Another advantage of Mini DV Camcorders is that you can have an NTSC (American/Canadian) camcorder and the video you shoot and record onto a DVD+-R disk can be actually played back in Europe on PAL equipment! I was very relieved when I discovered that since now it is easier to share the video memories with the loved ones back home.

Purley

So - are you saying that if I get a Canadian format minidv camcorder, I can burn a DVD in PAL format? Or are you saying that if I burn a DVD then anybody can watch that DVD - or do you have to specially burn it in UK format?

MarkG

Canadian camcorders will record in NTSC (American TV format). But 99% of UK DVD players will play NTSC DVDs, so if you record on DVD in NTSC the vast majority of people in the world can watch it.

The camcorder I'm buying soon records NTSC or PAL with a menu option to choose between them. Unfortunately it costs as much as a small car .

But as we move from SDTV to HDTV, I suspect a lot more will be switchable: PAL and NTSC have different resolutions and different frame rates, whereas 'PAL' and 'NTSC' HDTV have the same resolution and just different frame rates. That's why the HD camera I'm getting can do that.