We've got a little one on the way and MrsGrahamS is keen to get a camcorder so we can bore the tits off people by showing endless hours of unedited footage of "Baby's First Smile", "Baby's First Fart" etc etc.

She's also pointed out that if we get it before February then I can take it to Canada and film some of our (last) snowboarding holiday.

So…

What camcorder for baby and board?

HD would be good (I think). Solid state. Decent lens. Fairly rugged. Relatively compact (doesn't have to be tiny, I usually carry my DSLR boarding anyway).

Hero cam HD
or Panasonic – HDC – SD9

Both excellent but you will need a cheap ($100) version of sony vegas and a decent computer to edit the panasonic

Hero cam helmet mountable to with included kit

Both solid state and not bad on batteries

16 gig card gives about 6 hours on thr Panasonic at worst resolution – this is still extremely good though

Plum

I don't recommend trying to film your baby snowboarding until they can at least hold their head up: and then only if they're wearing a helmet.

igmc.

Thanks plumber.

Hmmm.. the Hero looks a little bit too focussed on action and not much else. Not sure it would meet the baby requirements.

Panasonic looks good tho.

jojoA1: for this trip it will just be bump. And bump will be staying back at the chalet firmly attached to MrsGrahamS. 😀

Not exactly what you are after but I think I'm going to get a GF1 camera – records HD video but only up to 1/2 an hour I think in one go.

How much video are you planning on boring people with? 🙂

We thought about it and then decided that actually our digital camera was quite sufficient for the job and so it has proven so far. Admittedly we're not recording whole school plays (he's only 18 months!) but frankly the inability to do that will probably prove to be a good thing. That said, maybe if I did record some things that long them I could force TJ to watch them just to live up to his narrow-minded view of things…

The Panasonic SDR-SW21 (£260) looks interesting:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/camcorders/review/2009/03/14/Panasonic-SDR-SW21-Rugged-Camcorder/p1

Waterproof, shock proof and a manual mode. No HD though, which seems a bit pointless in this day and age. 🙁

I have the Panasonic – HDC – SD9 and bought it for exactly the reasons that you are looking to buy a camera.

Would I but it again – yes. Its small, compact, picture quality is excellent.

clubber: I can just use the iPhone for shortish clips, but we'd like some longer "family memories" type stuff.
(we recently found a bunch of old videos of my family in the 80s – hilarious and amazing what it brings flooding back)

I've got an SLR so no video function on it. MrsGrahamS has a Panasonic compact, but the video is crap quality.

I will, of course, be sending TJ copies of all my videos too 😀

We've got the family memories stuff on the digital camera – admittedly a fairly decent compact one. I guess that people's view on what is and isn't acceptable quality is different. I don't really need it in HD to get the idea across 🙂

I guess that people's view on what is and isn't acceptable quality is different.

Well I could live with 720p, but I think any lower than that is going to look pretty awful on a huge resolution display in 20-30 years time. 🙂

Your eyesight won't be good enough by then to be bothered 🙂

Besides, it'll make it look more retro 🙂

Your eyesight won't be good enough by then to be bothered

I'm hoping they'll have the optical nanobot implants cracked by then 😀

Yeah but you know what they say makes you go blind. Especially squinting at an iphone screen 😉

That explains the hairy palms too. 😳

Anyone got any thoughts on this one: Sanyo Xacti VPC-CA9 (£250ish)

http://www.trustedreviews.com/camcorders/review/2009/08/22/Sanyo-Xacti-VPC-CA9—Waterproof-Camcorder/p1
http://uk.sanyo.com/Products/View/VPC-CA9EBK

Also waterproof(-ish, to 1.5m), not drop proof but solid state, takes 720p movies and has a good size sensor (1/2.5 inch).

Crap battery life though: 720mAh lasting less than one hour!

If anyone is remotely interested: I went for the Sanyo and got it, two spare batteries and an 8GB SanDisk Extreme card for £250 from http://digitalrev.com