Questions?

Hey, I know zilch about camcorders and brands and such but I was hoping you guys could point me toward one. I want one that will make dvd's and is relativly cheap. I will mainly be using it to film my last year at highschool and my snowboarding trip this winter. Any suggestions?

Ash

whats your price range?

under 800$ canadian

make sure you get a digital camcorder. stay away from hi-8 or anything like that. You can download Avid Xpress DV for free off their website. (Avid.com)

You are gonna need a decent sized hard drive and a dvd burner. $800 canadian dollars wont give you much flexibility but you can definately get it done.

ok so any brand names come to mind or anything?

im not really up to date on consumer camcorders. i like sony, but alot of people here like panasonic.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=365869&is=REG& addedTroughType=categoryNavigation

oh ya....get a tripod too.

if you dont want to ever deal with editing in the computer or anything like that with the camera and you want your stuff to be on dvd... go ahead and buy a DVD camcorder. very consumer, not a steep learning curve for editing, etc... or you could go the other route, buy a dvd burner and a minidv camera and transfer your tapes to DVD... or you could learn how to edit and go that route.

I do alittle editing for my friends snowboarding videos and I'd like to do that again, so what kind of camcorder would allow me to edit my own dvds?

most camcorders w/ a firewire output will let you hook it up to a computer to capture footage. that's what you want to look for.

Samsung has a small water resistant shock proof camera that also has a separate lens that you can strap to a helmet. I think it is 550 US$. I think the model number is x105. check out their website they have a few vids of it strapped to motocycle riders and the video is pretty much flawless.

chris, that sounds awesome!

"strapped to motocycle riders and the video is pretty much flawless."

Caveat emptor.

The video is pretty crappy and MPEG4 is a low quality recording medium.

It's hardly "flawless," especially when compared to MiniDV offerings in the same price range.

what I was talking about was the fact that it can take a hit and not fuzz or block out like the most MiniDV recorders. They have really good shock resistance.

"take a hit and not fuzz or block out like the most MiniDV recorders"

Interesting, I've never had that happen on a regular basis to any of the half dozen or so MiniDV camcorders that I've used. And I, and the cameras, have taken plenty of hits.

My experience has been that the tape has lost contact with the head (the cause of the "block out" that you describe) when I accidentaly dropped the camera once and once when vibrations worked the tripod mount screw loose on my roll bar mount and the camera ejected into the side of the car in a corner.

The numerous benefits of a MiniDV camera far outweigh the shock resitant benefit of solid state capture medium on the Samsung.

.... so which brand?

I would stick with a DV unit from either Sony or Panasonic.

ok thank you