Tell me about camcorders

[Dawn]

Adrian has decided we will need a camcorder for our trip to capture Steven's tantrums and meltdowns.

Never owned one ourselves so know nothing about them.

What do we need to know?

[mumof2]

dunno what you need to know, but just thought i'd tell you my Mum got a digital one recently....it's so small compared to our old 'tape' ones!

The boys love playing with it to capture their bikes stunts (yikes!)and i used it for recording motorbike racing - it's really easy to use.

go for it!

[josh.p.]

You can get some quite compact HDD camcorders now too We used to have a DVtape one and that was really compact and really easy to use, however I think I'd go with the HDD option if I was to buy another
There are loads of models out that capture in Hi Def as well as saving to a HDD (So they are HD HDD... confused? you will be!) if Hi Def is something you want to look into.

For a trip to florida though, I'd look at something that holds loads of videos, but is still small.

[Dawn]

Help everyone. Josh is speaking a strange language to me.

[Shellyamc]

We have a JVC Everio and we love it!! I would never get anything else again. It takes the movies onto an SD card which is great since we already had so many to go with our digital camera It is super easy to run it through your computer and burn the movies onto a dvd for storage. The cost of the large SD cards is pretty low these days, so we take a few with us and we can have hours of video that can fit in your purse

[Skywatcher]

we took a few short avis on the stills camera - ok they weren't dvd quality but a few short seconds of movement gave you a feel for something and saw the kids running around - we are far more likely to watche then ( as we put them together as a movie on the laptop) than watching hours of fireworks on a camcorder -

our problem with camcorders

1. you have to carry it - not such a big deal now as they are tiny compared to the old ones we used to lug around

2. they are expensive so you feel you hare carrying something very precious and really you want to be as hands free as you can - we ideally like to be just running around with bum bags and deep pockets

3. you get this feeling that you should video everything like shows , fireworks and parades but YOU WILL NEVER WATCH them - we found we spen most of the time watching our holiday through a viewfinder rather than actually living the holiday

So my advice is use the movie function on your camera for some brief shots of him playing in the fountains or hugging a mouse - but spend most of the time actually watching him

just one point of view ( a cheaper one too )

[ukwdwnut]

ive got a real nice compact sony one. i still prefer to have the mini dv tapes so i can keep them as masters and re edit if i need to or make new copies the picture is awesome still for an oldish media dont know much about the hdd ones, i know i wouldnt touch a dvd type from using one at the school the editing possibilites are nowhere near as good as dv tapes imo as you need to convert tham back to something using specific software you dont need this on the tapes.

thats just my personal preference it works for me great

[Disneybumble]

I agree with Skywatcher. We felt we had to video the children as we had it. DH was on the camera and l was on the camcorder. It felt we viewed Disney through a lens,that was in 2003 . So we didn't bother with it in 2006.

[Skywatcher]

I have always liked Siobhan she talks sooo much sense