I am looking to buy a new video camera. The battery on my old one decided to stop working. It was one that used the small tapes, so I thought its time to upgrade. Problem is I don't know what kind to buy. I know there are ones with internal hard drives, ones with flash memory and then the ones with the CD's. I would like one with a long battery life. So if anybody has some reccomendations that would be great.
Thanks everyone, I am looking into the cameras suggested.
I have an canon ZR700. It's easy to use and it has a mini usb port as well as a port like the one on a digital camera. Good luck.
Hubby and I just got a new Canon Vixia HF200. It's a nice camera and it's easy to use. We did research on cameras at cnet.com and bought the camera at newegg.com.
Good luck,
M.
Hi,
After much research I loved the Sony Handy Cam 60GB DCR-SR47. It was less expensive at SAMS CLUB, but still under $300 at other places.
I liked this one because it has a 60GB hard drive and you don't have to worry about carrying memory cards and such. All you video can be downloaded right to the computer.
Hope this helps!
The digital I have, it's a JVC brand, you can take films, take stills, and you plug it in to recharge. I have my two camcorders too. The first had batteries, and it came with a battery recharger. The second one....tell truth I can't remember. But it was a newer technology than the first. Your best bet I think is to get something digital that you can download immediately. the problem with the tapes is that sometimes the eject mechanism won't work. I had my first one in twice for assistance. And it was a Sony. I loved it. But now I have all those tapes that should be converted to DVD.
T. -
We had this same question ourselves when we were pregnant with our twin boys in 2006. The Panasonic camcorder we had was old, took larger tapes, and was heavy. After doing some research and considering price and an easy way to transfer our home movies, we went with a newer, smaller, lighter camcorder that recorded digitally but used smaller tapes. We read the reports on Consumer Reports (which we've always found to be very helpful and dead-on in our experience) and went with one of their 'best buys'.
To be honest, we found we didn't use it that much. The technology changes so fast and we really wanted something that we could just plug into our computer, download the video and write it to cd/dvd from our computer and be able to edit it if we chose. This past summer I bought my DH a Mini HD Flip (at Costco) and we LOVE LOVE LOVE it! The battery life on it is 1-2 hours (I forget), and it's small, compact (can slip into your pocket), and for the current technology - it works great and takes great video. It connects to your computer via USB (which is built into the Flip) and you download your videos right to your laptop. We've used that far more than our camcorder. We like the size of it, the ease of use, and find that we can capture more 'every day' moments with it because it's so handy to have close by (vs. lugging out a camcorder). We tend to record a few minutes at a time and then string the videos together in the software to make one longer 'movie'. Sound quality on it is good, as is the zoom. And the price isn't that bad either. I can't wait until they upgrade their technology and have a longer battery life which will allow for more recording time, and I hope they increase the zoom. (I think it's at x2 or x3 right now, I can't remember). The only real drawback is that there is no light on it so it doesn't film well in low light settings. It works fine when indoors, you just have to have a lot of lights on inside when using it in order to get a picture lighted well.
--K. -- mom to 3 boys in MI
I also have a Sony, mine is the DCR-SR45 and we love it. Very lightweight and easy to carry around, It has to internal hard drive and it holds a ton of movies. When it is getting full, we bought a cd burner and burn the movies onto DVD's, very easy!
