My husband and I are currently in the market for a video camera so we can begin taping our 5 month old son who is growing by the day! I've been looking around and there are so many options - we're really looking for something affordable but good quality. Any suggestions?
We just got a new one. Its a Canon DC330. We love it..easy to use, nice quality, and wasn't that much money. We actually got it at Cosco.I've found that there prices are really good.
good luck
I have the Hitachi hybrid video camera. It has a hard drive in it that can let you tape up to 6 hours of vide and it also has a mini-DVD slot so you can record on those as well. I absolutely love it and it takes great quality movies. The great thing is that you can tape on the hard drive and dub over the movies on to the mini-DVDs (max recording time on the mini-DVDs is a half hour). This video cam was new to the market 16 months ago when I bought it and the only one of its kind, so you may want to look it up on www.epinions.com to see other reviews and other models. Hitachi was the first company to make the video camera and they were the first out with the hybrid and they are known for their quality.
Canon is the best. We have the FS100 which we bought for $350.
We got a fancy video camera and found that it was a pain to use, to travel with, to charge, to edit and forget ever seeing the videos. We got the BEST gift - a flip video camera. It's the size of a small digital camera, it's inexpensive (maybe $150 or so) and you can record up to 1 full hour in the palm of your hand using 2 AA batteries. The best is that it has a USB to attach to a computer and when you plug it in, it automatically opens the computer for viewing the videos. AND you can email the clips 1-2-3. It comes with a cord to plug into the TV for easy viewing as well. I keep the video in our family room and with one button, anyone can catch those precious moments. I swear I don't have stock in the company but I should!
Unfortunately I don't have any advice from personal experience. I am looking for a video camera too. The Sanyo Xacti VPC-CG9 gets good reviews from what I've seen and it's under $300.00.
I cannot reccomend an exact one, but what I have always found helpful was reading customer reviews on the store's website. WalMart and Circuit City both have a place to look up all the customer reviews for products right underneathe the product. These are so valuable and always help me make a decision.
I have the Hitachi hybrid and can agree with the other post about it's ease of use. However, I find that it tends to be distracting for my 5 month old daughter when I use it. She seems to be more interested in what I am holding and stops doing whatever cute thing she's doing.
Since I take pictures of her almost everyday, I think she is more used to seeing my regular digital camera, so I tend to take snippets of video with it instead. I've found that the best "videos" are 1-2 minutes in length, so they're not at all boring (and they are easier to upload to free video sharing sites such as Photobucket). I have also taken video that is longer with the digital - I have a 1GB SD memory card and it can take up to 45 minutes of video (a 2GB card would probably yield more than double).
The video camera probably takes better quality, but it's only because my digital camera is older and only has 5 mega pixels. A newer camera would have 7 or more (I think), so the quality would be better. The upside to using a digital camera is having only one piece of equipment to think about and use.
If you're set on a video camera, I would recommend the Hitachi hybrid.
