I read a bit about camcorders for a couple years until I was sure people
were pretty happy with the AVCHD format that the hard drive camcorders
use. I finally got one in January.
One thing I think Consumer Reports is good for is checking out the
reliability of brands. When I was deciding to buy I looked at Canon,
Sony, and Panasonic. I ended up getting a Canon HG20 which has a 60 GB
hard drive. If you record at the camera's highest frame rate there is
room for 5 1/2 hours. At the slowest rate you have almost 23 hours. I
use a middle rate most of the time.
It downloads to the computer with USB 2. With a recording in a middle
speed it seemed to me that it was downloading in something close to real
time. In other words, if I had an hour of "footage" it took an hour to
download. That seems slow, but I saw no reason to be irritated by it.
Blah, blah, blah, I can go on and on, but these points might give you a
place to start.
I like getting stuff like this at Costco because I like the company and
their policies. Obviously that severely limited my choices, but I'm
pretty happy with what I got. The only thing I regret is that the camera
I got does not have a viewfinder. I think this is a serious drawback if
you'll be shooting a lot in bright sun. The LCD panel can be hard to see.
The best place I found to check out really thorough reviews of
camcorders is http://www.camcorderinfo.com/
The insight and discussion of features that they have are great.
Beyond that you can look at reviews on the NY times web site and others.
Jordan
trac...@aol.com wrote:
I am going to need to buy a new digital video camcorder. With the advent of
USB 3.0 on the horizon, does anyone have a time frame for when this
interface will be in usage on camcorders? I don't want to invest in a 1080p
camcorder with a firewire interface only to have it obsolete in 1-2 years. I am
given to understand that even Apple will not support firewire by 2011.
Thanks
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