I’ve been doing quite a bit of research any cannot decide what features I need, what is marketing B/S and what actually makes a good camcorder.

Any one here help? Going to be filming family stuff, days out, walks and possibly a bit of MTBing! 😉

Thanks…

I personally would now not consider buying anything other than a a good SLR with HD video capability. Probably a Canon 5D Mk2 – If its good enough to use to shoot an episode of House on it’ll cover most needs. Plus its a damn good full frame camera.

On a significantly cheaper budget than a 5D, can I suggest an olympus E-PL1? (or other mu-43 camera, but that’s a good start).

Thanks, but lugging a SLR around isn’t an option really. My wife wants something Camcorder like and easy (read smallish!) to carry around and use. Otherwise it’ll just get left at home.

Interested to see what is reccomended. The whole camcorder thing is so completely different to when I bought a hi-8 camera!

I’d love something with decent quality in a smallish package…. but not too expensive

Sanyo Xacti

Sony HDR-CX115E, full 1080p HD, records to SD or memory stick, small and light. Available for about £300 online. Had mine for a couple of months now, very good picture quality.

I picked up some 8GB class 10 SD cards for £13 each, and at the highest quality setting each card will hold 47 minutes of video. standard battery last for about 2 – 2 1/2 hours.

I personally would now not consider buying anything other than a a good SLR with HD video capability

Have you used one? Most reviews I read said that the HD video option was just a gimmick. At the time I looked at they couldn’t even AF whilst shooting video.

Get the right tool for the right job.

Any HD camcorder by Panasonic will be fine.

Have you used one? Most reviews I read said that the HD video option was just a gimmick. At the time I looked at they couldn’t even AF whilst shooting video.

Get the right tool for the right job.

It’s not a gimmick at all – but it’s not really a camcorder replacement – it’s a tool for fairly serious indie film-makers etc. To get really good results with them you need some extra bits of gear and skill at manual focussing, but they give amazing results and you would have to spend many, many times more to get comparable quality from a camcorder.