HD Video Camera question

[winchester21]

Camera rookie/dummy here. What is the best low cost camera to shoot HD viideos only. . Sometthing cheap for Christmas gift.

Thanks in advance-Chris

[picky]

I'm not certain how "low-cost" you mean, or what purposes you plan to use this camera for, but in the lower prices ranges, most of the brands are fairly even in features-quality-price aspects. I'd say, go to a review site such as CNET.com and search for reviews or buyer's guides on HD cameras in your price range, read the reviews and comparison charts and go from there. Don't get hung up on the numbers races like 1080p vs. 720p, etc, because at that price point, you would be hard pressed to see much difference if any. They, along with 1080i are considered HD. Try the cameras out in the store before you buy. You'll also have to decide whether you prefer miniDV tape or memory card recording; both have pros and cons. Finally, if you plan to edit as I do, make certain before you buy the camera that will interface with your home computer or laptop and that it doen't require you to do a bunch of upgrades to make the PC in compliance in order to upload and edit your footage, if editing is in your furture. I have been shooting DV for ten years now, with 4 of those in HD.

If you plan to edit, just remember that you will need editing software capable of editing HD and a computer that can handle such a demaning task. Also, unless you plan to output that HD back to the camera for HD playback through your HD TV, you must also own a Blu-Ray disk burner, which can be both spendy and demanding on your PC. I started with a small Canon SD camera and now use a large Sony HD pro camera. Canon, Sony, JVC and Panasonic all make some excellent video cameras in all price ranges as do others. In the lower price ranges, nearly all of the brands are at about the same quality and capability level. Buy what you need for what you want to do within your budget, while keeping an eye on future usages, Best of luck! - Glenn

[ace168516]

I use a Panasonic HDC-SD9...it was very reasonable...only thing is with the HD camcorders unless you buy the stupid mini-dvd burner, you need to be a bit computer savy to get the video encoded from AVCHD to something. HD takes up a lot of space...you can keep buying 16GB cards and playing off the camcorder, but to be really useful, you need to be able to get it to another media like blu-ray of hd-dvd. It is not complex per-se, but you need to know a bit about computers to do it. ACE

[J.4knee]

I just got one of these. Got it at Costco for $569. IMO there is a lot of camcorder in this little package. My main purpose for it is to video my dog training and futz around with HD stuff.

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=177&modelid=17994

[winchester21]

Thanks guys- I am opting for a gift cert and let my kid pour his own poison.

Good info.

[Joe Shmoe]

I was looking at these this Christmas.... has anything changed? I like The Canon models, but am not biased.

[peshewah]

Flip

[JJkizak]

I read on the Sony forum that the cheap Kodak performed really well for a cheapo deal.

JJK

[picky]

Most of the lower-end cameras have abandoned the use of MiniDV recording tape (cassettes) in favor of various types of Flash memory. The plus here is that there is now only data transfer to your PC hard drive, rather than having to do a realtime capture. The down-side is that video is no longer recorded and stored in an uncompressed, non-lossy format such as AVI, but instead in a highly-compressed, lossy format such as MPG4 which requires a PC with a very fast CPU of at least 3.0 GHz to edit and then it can be hap-hazard. -Glenn