Tips on a "big" purchase

[jmjj215]

Hey all, my wife and I are going to purchase a digital video camera in the next - um - two days probably. I've never purchased one before. What should we look out for? What kind of features are important? Which featuers are useless? Any advice from some more experienced people in this area would be great.

[34saving]

Well, dh is definitely the expert (on this subject) of the two of us, but I have gleened a few things over the years:

1) Most the manual features are useless. I'm guessing you're going to be filming your kids and the like. The last thing you have time for is to set your own white balance.
2) Don't pay more for an impressive "still shot" feature. They're never going to be as good as your normal camera, so use that instead.
3) Buying one generation out of date on eBay can save you a boatload. ( . . .and in this technology a generation is often 6 months!)
4) Dh is somewhat partial to Sony.
5) Check the price of the consumables as well as the camera.
6) Bigger viewscreens are nice, but also use up more battery life. Which is more important to you?

[markio26]

go to radio shack and ask alot of questions... best buy and cc are helpful also. how much do you want to spend?? that will help with your answer.

[DivaJen]

Weight matters - holding a heavier camera in one hand for a while takes its toll. A good zoom feature is nice to have - great for close-ups.

We've been happy with our Sony. It's about 5.5 years old and still performs well.

[34saving]

Optical zoom is worth more than digital zoom.

[Haku]

First of all, what is your budget? This is a big deal, as it will decide which model and brand you should look for.

Whatever it is, PLEASE stick with the MiniDV format. Let me know if you like me to elaborate on the technical mumbo jumbo as to why I feel this way.

For consumer lines, yes, you'll most likely point & shoot. However, um, well, I've done professional gigs videotaping other people's weddings before with semi-pro camcorders so.... I say manual focus and white balance are a big deal IF you're into that sort of thing AND you're getting yourself a decent camcorder. If you know or plan to know what you're doing, they can make quite a bit fo difference, especially when shooting indoors.

However, I completely agree about optical zoom. Digital zoom is ... to be perfectly blunt ... utter crap. I never use it, and I wish they don't even have it in there.

Brand-wise, Sony and Canon are the big two to consider. I am personally partial to Canon because they tend to have "warmer" colors. Sony is notorious for having too much blue, which makes everything look pale.

I can go on, but you'll have to please let me know what you plan to do with said camcorder and what your budget is.

[eisor]

I don't know much about camcorders, BUT I love researching things on the internet. LOVE it! So, one of my favorite sites (ok, i have many, but still...) has information about camcorders. Once you pick out a few options, I'd suggest reading the review for that model here.

Also, in my opinion Consumer Reports is definitely another place to look. I'm a big fan.

[jodi]

When I bought mine a few years ago, I narrowed my search down to two or three cameras. Then I priced them at stores and online. I figure I saved probably $200 (off a $600 camera) by getting it online. I think I used bizrate or a comparable site. I ended up buying with buydig.com and was happy with them.
As far as the technical stuff goes, I haven't a clue anymore I'm afraid that all left my head as soon as the purchase was made. Oh, though, we did want the ability to take digital still pictures with our videocamera, so we made sure to buy a videocamera with this capability - however, the quality was terrible (1.6 megapixels), so we ended up getting a nice digital camera a year later. Maybe this has gotten better in the last few years, but if you want good quality stills too, get a separate camera (5 megapixel has been great for our needs).

[lrjohnson]

I just want to say that I LOVE that you consider the digital camera a big purchase. To me any single item over 50 bucks is big, but some people I know treat anything less than a car as incidental!

[elcheapo]

optical zoom very important

[jmjj215]

Man guys, I knew you would help out

I'm thinking we don't want to go over $500. As far as use goes: home videos of our little boy (the second will be here tomorrow morning, we don't know if it's a boy or girl). I'm envisioning buying a mac in the next 18 months where we could do some cool DVD creation, etc. Still though - home videos will be the purpose.

I saw a JVC (I think that was the brand) that had a "hard drive" approach, no disk and they really touted that.

What's MiniDV? Why is this so important?

What's the difference bet. optical and digital zoom?

What type of "consumables" to you mean 34? Battery? Storage?

[34saving]

Hopefully your battery won't be a consumable, but the media is. Think about how you'll be using the camera. Personally I wouldn't like a hard drive approach because I never know when I'm going to be able to "dump it". (IE if your on vacation and your on board hard drive can handle x amount of footage before it gets dumped to a computer are you going to want to shoot more than x?) Also keep in mind if something goes wrong with your hard drive you're stuck.

[Fern]

can't beleve no one talked about miegapixels here.

Definitely go with a 5 megapixel camera; there's a big photo quality advantage over the older 3 megapixel.

We're very happy with Sony Cyber Shot. And a larger LCD display screen is better; what's the use of having a smaller display if you have to squint to see the photos?

[Haku]

I'm thinking we don't want to go over $500.

Ouch. For that price range, I recommend to stick with a Sony. Please try to stick with MiniDV, or *sigh* at least Digital 8mm.

I'm envisioning buying a mac in the next 18 months where we could do some cool DVD creation, etc.

I've got a Graphite Tower G4 with the Pioneer DVD burner and the iLife software that I can sell you CHEAP if you're interested. I know it's not the latest and the greatest, but it will definitely get the job done. Please let me know if you're interested.

What's MiniDV? Why is this so important?

Okay, you asked for it. *cracks his knuckles*

Perhaps I should start from the beginning. DV is short for Digital Video. It's a video compression method that fits on a recording magnetic tape. DV tapes are huge, and there's no way that you can make consumer handheld camcorders out of it. MiniDV is DV's little brother. It's nothing more than the same thing, but only 1/3 as long and can therefore be packaged in a much smaller size.

Incidentally, all digital video right now employ compression. The question is how much. Naturally, the higher the compression, the more information you can fit on a smaller medium, but the greater the loss in quality and ease of use.

MiniDV currently has the least amount of compression for consumer camcorders, followed Mpeg-2, followed by Mpeg-4.

More importantly in your case, MiniDV is a lot easier to video edit than Mpeg-2 or 4. Seriously, that's how I did all my video edits with my Graphite Tower. If you choose Mpeg-2 for a recording format, you will not be able to use Apple's iMovie or Final Cut Express (but you can with Final Cut Pro).

If you would like me to elaborate more on the differences in the other codecs, please let me know.

What's the difference bet. optical and digital zoom?

Optical zoom is true zooming, similar to the effect of zooming with your telescope or binocular. The lenses do the work, and therefore, there is no loss in quality.

Digital zoom is the onboard computer enlarging the pixels... and that's it. As you can imagine, the picture quality will be atrocious. I think I'd rather gag on goat dung or *gulp* incur credit card debt *ack* than use digital zoom. In fact, one of the first thing I do with a camcorder is to disable that "feature".

The bottom line is, what appears to be "better" isn't actually better. It's just marketing hype. The only thing that really IS better is having 3CCDs or a bigger, better lens. However, both features are not available within your price range. I also can't state this enough. If you plan to video edit anything, pick only MiniDV. You will thank me later for helping you avoid this monumental headache.

[Haku]

Originally Posted by Fern

can't beleve no one talked about miegapixels here.

Definitely go with a 5 megapixel camera; there's a big photo quality advantage over the older 3 megapixel.

We're very happy with Sony Cyber Shot. And a larger LCD display screen is better; what's the use of having a smaller display if you have to squint to see the photos?

Um, that's a camera right?

I thought jmjj wanted a video camcorder.

For what it's worth, megapixels doesn't translate into quality. Rather, image quality is determined by the size and quality of the lens and CCD/CMOS sensor (and this is true with video camcorders as well).

Megapixels, however, does make a difference depending on what type of output you want. For example, if you want to share a picture online, then 1.3 megapixels would be enough because computer monitors have a low PPI (Pixels per square Inch). However, if you want to print stuff out on paper, then yes, you'll want to get something bigger. 3 megapixels are plenty for card-sized prints, and 5 megapixels are capable of full page printouts. You can print big with less megapixels, but there is a loss in quality, perceivable or not.

[Haku]

I saw a JVC (I think that was the brand) that had a "hard drive" approach, no disk and they really touted that.

Oops! That one nearly slipped by me. I don't have anything against the hard drive camcorders so long as it records the information in DV and NOT Mpeg-2.

However, there is a subtle advantage with tape: It can double as your master archive. Simply store your tapes somewhere and pop in a new one. Once you run out of room with a hard drive recorder, you'll have to overwrite it to record more material. Whether that is a big deal or not is entirely up to you.

[Fern]

my apologies....i read the post quickly and just saw "digital camera"