what is a good video camera to buy

[banshee21]

I am looking to buy a good video camera to post up some vids on you tube but dont know what to look for. Not really wanting to spend a million dollars, but I also dont what a piece of crap either?

[Snopczynski]

I have a sony cybershot. It works pretty good.

[banshee21]

where is a good place to pick one up and about how much do they run for?

[KaosBanshee44]

I have a sony cybershot. It works pretty good.

 

man i had the T5 cybershot and messed up on me twice. If you want a good camera slash video get a cannon. That's my next camera i'm getting i'm tired of Sony cameras.

[banshee21]

I have been looking more towards the cannons myself, I would need the Hard drive type correct?

[Meat]

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guys stay away from Cannon mini DV camcorders. I bought a helmet cam and needed a camera for it, Cannon and Sony are the only two companies that offer a nice selection of cameras that come with AV Inputs to plug a helmet cam into. So I bought a Cannon MiniDV on Ebay. It worked great when I got it, but 3 weeks later it just kept ejecting tapes as soon as you put em in and I'd get a little error message on the screen. So I start googling "tape ejecting cannon camcorders" and found TONS of info on Cannon MiniDV ejecting tapes EXACTLY how mine was doing it. There seems there's a problem with how they designed the heads and something eventually breaks so the tape wont line up with the heads... so it ejects the tape and you get the error message. The cost to fix it is like $400, plus shipping and its NOT covered on Cannons warrenties. Alot of people are very mad at Cannon because they bought a 800 dollar camera and its broke in a few months. And from what I read, if yours is not broken yet, it will eventually. Some were lasting for years, some a few weeks. There's a whole website dedicated to the Cannon tape ejection problem, there's also a whole website dedicated to a class action lawsuit againt Cannon soley on this ejection problem. So....... dont buy a Cannon MiniDV.

 

 

 

Someone asked about flash cards and hard drive camcorders. I own an Aiptek DVR. Thats Digital Video Recorder. This thing is awsome. I found it from a recommendation from a helmet cam website. It has the AV inputs for my helmet cam !!! Plus it records in true HIGH DEF quality. It has three video settings, internet quality, DVD quality and hi-def. The camera has some small internal memory, but your supposed to use an SD card. I bought an 8GB card for $40 bucks and i can record 4 hours of video in hi-def quality. It also takes still pictures. three settings for pictures is 3, 5 ad 8 megapixels. Pictures look great. There are a few downfalls with this camera, the zoom sucks, it wasnt designed to be zooming anyways. Its only has a 4x zoom. The video format is .mov which is played in Apple's Quicktime player. And high def video played back on your computer can be slow and sketchy if you have an older computer, low ram or a basic video card. Playback on the tv plays great and the video looks really really good in high def. You can plug this camcorder into the RCA jacks of your television and record TV shows and movies onto the SD card.... and then transfer those files to your computer. It so small it fits in your shirt pocket and it has a nice clear LCD screen. The quality of the case and the buttons are sub-par to the big Japanese camcorder manufactures, but nothing has failed me yet. Only costs $140 bucks, if you shop around you can get em for $120 bucks new.

 

 

 

I also have a Sony DVD-R camcorder and I don't like it. Any good bump in the road makes the video skip. Its impossible to go offroad without it skipping. I found the camera was relativly big compared to the smaller mini DV's. I though editing, viewing, erasing clips was harder than it should be. It was nice to be able to view scenes without having to fast forward or rewind a tape. The little DVD discs are just like any other disc, its prone to scratching and they are re-writable so you can reuse them. I wouldnt recommend this camera to anyone who video's action sports. Good for filming grandma's birthday.... yes.

 

My third camcorder is a cheap Panasonic I picked up at Wal-mart. Its a mini-dv and its awsome. 700x digital zoom, 30x optical. $300 bucks. low end model, but the videos are fine and everything works nicely. You don't really need a digital camcorder full of special effects, fancy fades and editing features, picuture frames, etc.., you want to add those effects with the video editing software thats on your computer. video taken with the Panasonic miniDV

[PhilMoore]

I have a sony handycam with HDD (30gb disk drive)

 

It takes great movies in very good quality. But it saves them in a format that is not directly compatible with iMOVIE (mac)

 

I have to convert the file, which can take a lot of time before I can edit it.

 

This is the fault of Apple computer, not Sony. So, I guess ultimately I really don't have a complaint about the Sony.

 

It is very compact, and seemingly more rugged than a tape or disk media.

 

I have had it over a year and it works well.

 

I bought it used off of Ebay for a little over $400

 

 

I like the idea of the Casio EXILM with super slow motion. I think it goes to 1200 FPS (very low res) or something. I haven't used one though so before I invested I would definitely want to play with one first .