which camcorder to buy?

[arclight]

i am planning to buy a camcorder but not able to decide which one. whether to go for sony, samsung or panasonic or else. my budget is between 20-30k.
and what are the features i should look out for?

[Keith Sebastian]

Sony miniDV range will fit your budget well. But if you're looking for exceptional video quality at the same price go for JVC. They have 3 CCD cameras for the price of Sony's single CCD models. Whereas Sony's 3 CCD cameras are insanely expensive.

Keith

[magnet]

whts the diff b/w digicam and cam corder?????...and which company rules in making digicam...besides sony??

[Nemesis]

A camcorder is a video recording device whereas a digicam is mostly used to refer to a digital still camera that can record small videos. For digicams, Nikon, Canon, and Sony are the best.

[magnet]

okk..so do camcorder can work as digicam???also if so...which one has good quality???

[arclight]

i dont think i'll go for jvc as its customer support in india is not that good i guess. pls tell which model of sony or others.

[Charley]

I'd go for Canon - 1st choice , then Sony

[Keith Sebastian]

Originally Posted by arclight

i dont think i'll go for jvc as its customer support in india is not that good i guess. pls tell which model of sony or others.

If you're interested in Sony, this is what you should be looking at -

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/
INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/
SY_BrowseCatalog-Start?CategoryName=
dcc_DICamcorders_MiniDVHandycamCamcorders&Dept=cam eras

Keith

[club_pranay]

i have a panasonic DV... it's good enuf. sony is obviously of higher quality but at a much higher price

[arclight]

what's the difference between Hi8, D8, mini DV technologies offered by sony?

[sam8240]

panasonic provides some sturdy models like
nvgs15
with 24 x optical zoom
great thing no other camcorder have 24 x zoom
price within range

[Keith Sebastian]

Originally Posted by arclight

what's the difference between Hi8, D8, mini DV technologies offered by sony?

Hi8 - is the oldest of the three. It's an analogue format. A Hi8 tape records video on 8mm tape at qualities significantly better than VHS on much less amount of tape than VHS. Hi8 will soon be history.

D8 - is newer than Hi8 and records DV like digital signals on 8mm analogue tape (same stock used for Hi8 tapes). D8 cameras can record and playback D8 tapes digitally. They are backward compatible, so they can playback and record older Hi8 and Video8 tapes too.

MiniDV - is DV on digital tape (smaller than Hi8, D8 ). DV is a digital compression algorithm (like MPEG) which records high quality video on tape. Sound quality is higher too, 12 - 16 bit CD quality sound. Audio dubbing is possible, where you can add a new audio track to an existing video track and output the result whilst previewing in realtime. These features can sometimes be found on D8 cams, but not always.

MiniDV is not backward compatible with D8, Hi8 and Video8.

MiniDV cameras can transfer video digitally via Firewire (like D8 ) but at much higher speeds than older analogue formats.

Hope this cleared most of your doubts. I've exclusively used miniDV for the past year and can assure you it's much more convenient than D8 while transferring data. The only advantage D8 offers is cheaper tapes.

Keith