Camcorder purchase - getting confused by all the options
Discussion
Right,
I've read buyers guides, I've read reviews, I've searched on here...and I STILL don't know what to get!
So far i've narrowed it down to:-
- Ideally under £400. Under £300 even better.
- HDD or solid-state memory (SDHC etc.)
But I still can't decide between:-
- High-def (even 720) or Std def, as the HD's that are in my price range are mainly single-CCD, whereas I have seen a couple of CMOS-sensor'd or 3x CCD sensor'd Std Def camcorders.
- Whether a HDD is better or worse than solid-state - any advice?
- What else is important to look out for?
It's for holidays and occasional other use (e.g. trackdays) at the moment, but I can see it still being used in a few years time when we may have a baby...so i want it to be flexible enough too.
Finally - any brands to avoid? Any brands to recommend re: build quality/reliability or ease-of-use?
Thanks,
Martin.
I've read buyers guides, I've read reviews, I've searched on here...and I STILL don't know what to get!
So far i've narrowed it down to:-
- Ideally under £400. Under £300 even better.
- HDD or solid-state memory (SDHC etc.)
But I still can't decide between:-
- High-def (even 720) or Std def, as the HD's that are in my price range are mainly single-CCD, whereas I have seen a couple of CMOS-sensor'd or 3x CCD sensor'd Std Def camcorders.
- Whether a HDD is better or worse than solid-state - any advice?
- What else is important to look out for?
It's for holidays and occasional other use (e.g. trackdays) at the moment, but I can see it still being used in a few years time when we may have a baby...so i want it to be flexible enough too.
Finally - any brands to avoid? Any brands to recommend re: build quality/reliability or ease-of-use?
Thanks,
Martin.
Right, if I'm going to stretch to a HD camcorder, these are the 4 babies in the frame (so to speak! 
). Prices are after £50 cashback where offered and including 16Gb external memory where required.
Canon HG-10 (Internal HDD, £460)
Canon HF-100 (SDHC cards, £530*)
Panasonic SD-9 (SDHC cards, £420)
Sony SR-10 (Internal HDD, £500)
So...any comments on any of these (all look good enough), and any comments on whether an internal HDD is going to be more or less of a liability than external SDHC cards?
Thanks again,
Martin.
). Prices are after £50 cashback where offered and including 16Gb external memory where required.Canon HG-10 (Internal HDD, £460)
Canon HF-100 (SDHC cards, £530*)
Panasonic SD-9 (SDHC cards, £420)
Sony SR-10 (Internal HDD, £500)
So...any comments on any of these (all look good enough), and any comments on whether an internal HDD is going to be more or less of a liability than external SDHC cards?
Thanks again,
Martin.
- Dixons have it £40 cheaper if they get anymore stock in.
Firstly, and I wait to be shot down in flames, DO NOT GET a HD camcorder. There is no point. Whilst I am sure your Video will be crisp and lovely, you aint no Steven Spielberg. On top of that image editing and retention of HD videos is a nightmare even on a very fast machine. From what I recall most (if not all) HD video cameras use some bizare proprietory format which needs to be converted to used on anything else other than the original software. The videos are obviously large and this takes a long time to re-encode. Along with storage of the video which takes up huge amount of space (bearing in mind you need two copies on two seperate disks) then all in all its much less hassle to stick with SD, which is still pretty good.
Forgot to say, if I were you I would go for a SDHC card version. Much smaller and you are more likely to carry it with you in a pocket. Panasonic do a nice one for about £180.00. Size of a Large mobile phone.
Forgot to say, if I were you I would go for a SDHC card version. Much smaller and you are more likely to carry it with you in a pocket. Panasonic do a nice one for about £180.00. Size of a Large mobile phone.
Edited by Road2Ruin on Tuesday 26th August 14:53
Road2Ruin said:
Firstly, and I wait to be shot down in flames, DO NOT GET a HD camcorder. There is no point. Whilst I am sure your Video will be crisp and lovely, you aint no Steven Spielberg. On top of that image editing and retention of HD videos is a nightmare even on a very fast machine. From what I recall most (if not all) HD video cameras use some bizare proprietory format which needs to be converted to used on anything else other than the original software. The videos are obviously large and this takes a long time to re-encode. Along with storage of the video which takes up huge amount of space (bearing in mind you need two copies on two seperate disks) then all in all its much less hassle to stick with SD, which is still pretty good.
Forgot to say, if I were you I would go for a SDHC card version. Much smaller and you are more likely to carry it with you in a pocket. Panasonic do a nice one for about £180.00. Size of a Large mobile phone.
AVCHD is used in BluRay so is hardly some fleeting standard now the hd-dvd v BD debarcle has been settled.Forgot to say, if I were you I would go for a SDHC card version. Much smaller and you are more likely to carry it with you in a pocket. Panasonic do a nice one for about £180.00. Size of a Large mobile phone.
Edited by Road2Ruin on Tuesday 26th August 14:53
Editting is easy in a few packages, no different to SD video in fact. Retention? Disk space is dead cheap.
Havoc - are they all 3ccd cams? I went for an sdhc cam over hdd as I wanted to use it in the car, a friends sony hdd hd cam lasted until just before the first bridge at the 'ring before it shut itself down due to vibration...
R2R - thanks re: HDD/SDHC - hadn't thought of that, I'll check the dimensions of them all.
Edit: All same length (129-135mm), similar other dimensions (67x65mm for SD-9 smallest, 76x81mm for SR-10 largest), but weight varies - SD-9 and HF-100 are just sub-400g, HG-10 and SR-10 are ~500g.
All - re: HD/normal def - how much difference DOES it make in terms of processing time/effort on the PC to convert from AVCHD, and how much more memory does it take up? I'm currently running an older (1700MHz Athlon) PC with at least 1Gb of RAM (trying to remember if I fitted a second pair of 512 chips or not...), would rather not update just yet - if I need to that might affect the purchase decision...
Not sure I'll bother using in-car at trackdays as most of the time I'm driving a hired caterfield rather than my own car anyway, and I'd imagine vibration won't be an issue for holidays, home, and pit-wall stuff*.
Edit: All same length (129-135mm), similar other dimensions (67x65mm for SD-9 smallest, 76x81mm for SR-10 largest), but weight varies - SD-9 and HF-100 are just sub-400g, HG-10 and SR-10 are ~500g.
All - re: HD/normal def - how much difference DOES it make in terms of processing time/effort on the PC to convert from AVCHD, and how much more memory does it take up? I'm currently running an older (1700MHz Athlon) PC with at least 1Gb of RAM (trying to remember if I fitted a second pair of 512 chips or not...), would rather not update just yet - if I need to that might affect the purchase decision...
m12_nathan said:
Havoc - are they all 3ccd cams? I went for an sdhc cam over hdd as I wanted to use it in the car, a friends sony hdd hd cam lasted until just before the first bridge at the 'ring before it shut itself down due to vibration...
Panasonic is 3 x 6mm CCD, others are 1 x 8-9mm CMOS, not sure which is better (any ideas?).Not sure I'll bother using in-car at trackdays as most of the time I'm driving a hired caterfield rather than my own car anyway, and I'd imagine vibration won't be an issue for holidays, home, and pit-wall stuff*.
- Although given how stupendously loud those Chevrons and Lola's were (at a range of ooh at least 3m!!!
) at Silverstone last month, you never know... 
m12_nathan said:
Road2Ruin said:
Firstly, and I wait to be shot down in flames, DO NOT GET a HD camcorder. There is no point. Whilst I am sure your Video will be crisp and lovely, you aint no Steven Spielberg. On top of that image editing and retention of HD videos is a nightmare even on a very fast machine. From what I recall most (if not all) HD video cameras use some bizare proprietory format which needs to be converted to used on anything else other than the original software. The videos are obviously large and this takes a long time to re-encode. Along with storage of the video which takes up huge amount of space (bearing in mind you need two copies on two seperate disks) then all in all its much less hassle to stick with SD, which is still pretty good.
Forgot to say, if I were you I would go for a SDHC card version. Much smaller and you are more likely to carry it with you in a pocket. Panasonic do a nice one for about £180.00. Size of a Large mobile phone.
AVCHD is used in BluRay so is hardly some fleeting standard now the hd-dvd v BD debarcle has been settled.Forgot to say, if I were you I would go for a SDHC card version. Much smaller and you are more likely to carry it with you in a pocket. Panasonic do a nice one for about £180.00. Size of a Large mobile phone.
Edited by Road2Ruin on Tuesday 26th August 14:53
Editting is easy in a few packages, no different to SD video in fact. Retention? Disk space is dead cheap.
Havoc - are they all 3ccd cams? I went for an sdhc cam over hdd as I wanted to use it in the car, a friends sony hdd hd cam lasted until just before the first bridge at the 'ring before it shut itself down due to vibration...
Can't be bothered to work out the sizes, but 2TB of disk is £150+vat so hardly bank breaking stuff. Add a Mozy or carbonite subscription for backup and you are away.
You can convert it easily, I just use my laptop rather than a mentally powerful PC and it can happily convert avchd to any format you choose, I tend to archive a couple of copies, one in AVCHD, one in HD MPEG then I create wmv or whatever for downloading.
Admittedly my laptop is more powerful than Havoc's but it isn't an expensive ninja machine by any stretch.
You can convert it easily, I just use my laptop rather than a mentally powerful PC and it can happily convert avchd to any format you choose, I tend to archive a couple of copies, one in AVCHD, one in HD MPEG then I create wmv or whatever for downloading.
Admittedly my laptop is more powerful than Havoc's but it isn't an expensive ninja machine by any stretch.
Edited by m12_nathan on Wednesday 27th August 09:12
Interesting debate...thanks both!
All-in I guess it's going to be £400+ for an HD machine or <£250 for an SD machine, with the trade-off being longevity and capability vs better price and more manageable/useable files.
...so is the thick-end of £200 worth it??? The cheaper one WOULD be adequate now, but in a couple of years time if we've a family will I want to trade-up to HD, and how much will I spend then on an HD camcorder???
All-in I guess it's going to be £400+ for an HD machine or <£250 for an SD machine, with the trade-off being longevity and capability vs better price and more manageable/useable files.
...so is the thick-end of £200 worth it??? The cheaper one WOULD be adequate now, but in a couple of years time if we've a family will I want to trade-up to HD, and how much will I spend then on an HD camcorder???
Road2Ruin said:
The files are also useless if you want to share them with anyone else, unless of course both of you have a blu ray player.
Is it not possible to save the files in a format that can be played on a normal DVD player (from the editing software)? I've been thinking about getting the SD9 and assumed I could same them in HD for my own use and in "normal" mode for sending to others. Is that not the case?Thanks.
gixxer1000 said:
Road2Ruin said:
The files are also useless if you want to share them with anyone else, unless of course both of you have a blu ray player.
Is it not possible to save the files in a format that can be played on a normal DVD player (from the editing software)? I've been thinking about getting the SD9 and assumed I could same them in HD for my own use and in "normal" mode for sending to others. Is that not the case?Thanks.
Right,
I'm going for an SD camcorder as I have neither the PC nor TV to make best-use of HD now, and I can't be arsed with the extra hassle of conversion.
I also need decent Image Stabilisation (optical or advanced electronic). And still want to use HDD or SDHC media...which I know will either push the price up or compromise elsewhere.
So I've found the following, but was wondering if anyone had any other suggestions (esp. other brands - any Canons?):-
- Panasonic H280 (Opt IS, 3xCCD)
- Panasonic H40 (Opt IS, 1xCCD)
- Panasonic S7 (Elec IS, ?xCCD)
...I've also discounted the Sony SR42 due to poor reviews, and i think the better 'Handicams' are above my price-bracket of <£400.
Priority is optics first, IS second, ease-of-use & manual controls third.
I'm going for an SD camcorder as I have neither the PC nor TV to make best-use of HD now, and I can't be arsed with the extra hassle of conversion.
I also need decent Image Stabilisation (optical or advanced electronic). And still want to use HDD or SDHC media...which I know will either push the price up or compromise elsewhere.
So I've found the following, but was wondering if anyone had any other suggestions (esp. other brands - any Canons?):-
- Panasonic H280 (Opt IS, 3xCCD)
- Panasonic H40 (Opt IS, 1xCCD)
- Panasonic S7 (Elec IS, ?xCCD)
...I've also discounted the Sony SR42 due to poor reviews, and i think the better 'Handicams' are above my price-bracket of <£400.
Priority is optics first, IS second, ease-of-use & manual controls third.
1080i is just over 100MB per minute so your 15GB example is nearly 2.5 hours @ 1080i or an hour and 10 mins at 1080p, the rendering isn't real time on my laptop but then I didn't used to have a computer that could render SD avi files from a mini DV cam to dvd quality MPEG in real time or better and still did it, do I wish now that I had worse quality video so I'd saved a bit of time back then? Nope.
If you record in HD you can make an SD copy and an HD copy after editting, you can then watch in either, you can't render SD video as HD and suddendy get back information that you didn't ever record.
As a test I just opened a 9:20 long project of AVCHD 1080i video and started rendering it as DVD-PAL MPG2 720x576 - estimated time was 21 mins, hardly the end of the world, and remember this is on a laptop, not a proper fast computer.
File sizes estimated were AVCHD @ 1080i - 1.04GB, MPG2 @ DVD-PAL50 - 432MB so just over twice the size for 4 times the information...
PS. Minor amount of extra detail? about 4 times the pixels!
If you record in HD you can make an SD copy and an HD copy after editting, you can then watch in either, you can't render SD video as HD and suddendy get back information that you didn't ever record.
As a test I just opened a 9:20 long project of AVCHD 1080i video and started rendering it as DVD-PAL MPG2 720x576 - estimated time was 21 mins, hardly the end of the world, and remember this is on a laptop, not a proper fast computer.
File sizes estimated were AVCHD @ 1080i - 1.04GB, MPG2 @ DVD-PAL50 - 432MB so just over twice the size for 4 times the information...
PS. Minor amount of extra detail? about 4 times the pixels!
Edited by m12_nathan on Thursday 28th August 12:18
m12_nathan said:
1080i is just over 100MB per minute so your 15GB example is nearly 2.5 hours @ 1080i or an hour and 10 mins at 1080p, the rendering isn't real time on my laptop but then I didn't used to have a computer that could render SD avi files from a mini DV cam to dvd quality MPEG in real time or better and still did it, do I wish now that I had worse quality video so I'd saved a bit of time back then? Nope.
If you record in HD you can make an SD copy and an HD copy after editting, you can then watch in either, you can't render SD video as HD and suddendy get back information that you didn't ever record.
As a test I just opened a 9:20 long project of AVCHD 1080i video and started rendering it as DVD-PAL MPG2 720x576 - estimated time was 21 mins, hardly the end of the world, and remember this is on a laptop, not a proper fast computer.
File sizes estimated were AVCHD @ 1080i - 1.04GB, MPG2 @ DVD-PAL50 - 432MB so just over twice the size for 4 times the information...
PS. Minor amount of extra detail? about 4 times the pixels!
I havent checked your figures but lets assume you are correct. 1hr and 10mins of video is a small amount at 1080p is not a lot of time for 15GB, when you have kids you shoot that most weeks. You then want to change that to MPEG2 720x576. You say for 9'20" in 1080i it takes 21mins, that equates to about 5hrs for 1hr 10mins in 1080p. You then have 2 files one of 15GB and one of 4.5GB, 20GB in total and a back up of neither of them. Online backups are not practical with such large amount of data as the transfer rates are so slow. 1080i is infact 2.5 times the the detail as each image is interpolated so its 1920x540 and what extra detail are you getting? You can make out each individual blade of grass..... If you are a serious semi pro videographer then yes lets go HD but seriously not for home movies. If you record in HD you can make an SD copy and an HD copy after editting, you can then watch in either, you can't render SD video as HD and suddendy get back information that you didn't ever record.
As a test I just opened a 9:20 long project of AVCHD 1080i video and started rendering it as DVD-PAL MPG2 720x576 - estimated time was 21 mins, hardly the end of the world, and remember this is on a laptop, not a proper fast computer.
File sizes estimated were AVCHD @ 1080i - 1.04GB, MPG2 @ DVD-PAL50 - 432MB so just over twice the size for 4 times the information...
PS. Minor amount of extra detail? about 4 times the pixels!
Edited by m12_nathan on Thursday 28th August 12:18
If, after editing, I have 2:20 mins of my child per week (in 1080i) then please shoot me. It'll never get watched.
My MiniDV cam of 9 years ago isn't progressive scan so 576i - 1080i is still 4 times the info, and I assume that you've never compared sd verses hd on a decent sized screen? It looks massively better
Copying data to another disk is a copy, not a backup, if your house burns down, floods or you get burgled having an extra stolen or damaged disk won't help you Offsite backup is the only way to go regardless of how you do it.
Let's agree to disagree, I'm just happy knowing that in 20 years time watching footage of my child on a 20000p screen or whatever we have by then I won't be looking back wishing I'd not been 10 years behind with technology for the sake of not being bothered to leave a computer rendering video while I was asleep and a few quid on disk space which is mentally cheap. I'd rather have the best quality I can, mono MP3 files at low bit rates take up less space than lossless stereo files but I know which I'd rather have. Do you save all pics from your camera at 640x480 16 colour jpeg because it takes less space or do you keep the 14bit RAW files at full res, horses for courses.
My MiniDV cam of 9 years ago isn't progressive scan so 576i - 1080i is still 4 times the info, and I assume that you've never compared sd verses hd on a decent sized screen? It looks massively better
Copying data to another disk is a copy, not a backup, if your house burns down, floods or you get burgled having an extra stolen or damaged disk won't help you
Offsite backup is the only way to go regardless of how you do it.Let's agree to disagree, I'm just happy knowing that in 20 years time watching footage of my child on a 20000p screen or whatever we have by then I won't be looking back wishing I'd not been 10 years behind with technology for the sake of not being bothered to leave a computer rendering video while I was asleep and a few quid on disk space which is mentally cheap. I'd rather have the best quality I can, mono MP3 files at low bit rates take up less space than lossless stereo files but I know which I'd rather have. Do you save all pics from your camera at 640x480 16 colour jpeg because it takes less space or do you keep the 14bit RAW files at full res, horses for courses.
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