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Originally Posted by Nor
Apologies for getting your name wrong Altis  Don't spose you are as knowledgable when it comes to DV cameras ? Need to get one of them asap for my folks. |
Best snippet of advice I can offer for DV camcorders is, focus on the features you really want/need and don't be diverted by the bells and whistles that sound great but are of little practical use. For example, many will offer digital still photography but the image quality is seldom very good - if you really want to take digital photos, you really do still need a digital camera. And the kinds of video-effects you can achieve in-camera are normally pants compared to what you can get from half-decent DV-editing computer software.
Mini-DV cameras offer the best minaturisation and slightly better image quality than Digital-8, but you will pay more for it. Personally I use a Sony Digital Handycam, which looks essentially the same as any Handycam produced in the last 15 years, and it works a treat.
Above all, decide whether you are ever likely to want to do DV editing on your computer and look carefully at cameras that claim to offer DV-out ... if it doesn't say DV-in/out, then it almost certainly doesn't allow you to export your finished project from the computer back to camera tape. This may or may not be a problem depending on whether you have a DVD writer and whether the people you want to show your videos to all have DVD players.