hey all,

i'm just curious, but what should i know about digital camcorder before purchasing one? once, again, i'm looking at Sony camcorders. any information would be greatly appreciated!

 

i've done a bit a research, but i'm rather confused about all the different formats. there are:

digital 8
mini DV
micro MV
etc...

is there one that is prefered over another?

 

miniDV is the prefered format for digital cameras nowadays. Also make sure you get as much optical zoom as possible. digital zoom sucks because it is just using pixels to compensate for the zoom.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by jtpassat
[B]miniDV is the prefered format for digital cameras nowadays.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by rworne
[B]...
Other nice features is firewire (or iLink) passthrough, or the ability to hook up any video feed to the camera and the camera will then convert it to a firewire signal.

 

I'm partial to Sony, but I heard that Canons are also very good. Other prominent brands are JVC and Panasonic, but if I were going to buy another one soon I would stick to Sony or Canon. I doubt you can go wrong with either of them. I cannot recommend any models because i purchased mine 3 years ago (Digital-8) and all the models out now are totaly different. If you have a specific application or software you wish to use, I would suggest reading any forums or groups involving that software to see what cameras are the most trouble-free. In my case, I use Macs and Final Cut Pro. Sony is well supported here, Canons work as well, but with a bit more work. If you are using Premier on a Windows box, I would suggest visiting Adobe's support forums and seeing if they have a list of recommended camcorders and firewire card. It's very important on a Windows box to get a decent firewire card and a speedy hard drive. In fact, since drives are so cheap a 30 or 60GB drive dedicated to video work will make you life much easier. It's better to have it set up as an internal drive and not get an external Firewire drive, that's adding too much traffic on the firewire bus and asking for trouble although it works fine for quite a few people. Dropped frames really suck.

Pass-through is a feature that is not usually prominently displayed on a camera, so you will need to look carefully to see if it supports it. When I bought mine in 2000, it was quite rare and only on the most expensive models, now it is much more common at all price ranges and quite a few brands come with it now.

There's plenty of great cameras out there now, and the prices are really low. Even a $600 digital camcorder will give you excellent quality video.