Which Camcorder????

[Deborah3108]

OK - the dilemma is - Katherine (Kath2407) and I jet off to Kenya for a fortnight in November. I think it would be a worthwhile investment to get a Camcorder to record our exploits. Obviously a week in Lanzarote didn't have need for a camcorder but safaris in Kenya certainly do.

I've (Katherine has left this project to me!) decided that a Hard Disk camcorder will be the best idea as we don't want to be taking memory cards or dvd's with us. Over the course of a fortnight we could take hours of film so I don't want to have to take loads of extra bits. We'd talked about the possibility of taking her laptop with us to download stuff on to but I think we really want to try to pack light and have as little messing around as possible.

I've narrowed it down to the JVC Everio range - when we began looking in about February these were the only hard drive ones available, there are a few more now but I've become quite attatched to the Everio idea. The problem now is which one do I get? Do I go for the one with the largest hard drive - which can store something like 25 hours of video or can I get away with a smaller one?

Basically - does anyone have one of these and what do you think about it? And if any budding film makers out there can enlighten me as to all these technical things about zooms and such like then please do!

[saxon]

Hi,

I have got the JVC Everio GZ-MC500 and I is an amazing 5 Mega Pixel camera and 3CCD camcorder, fits perfectly in the palm of your hand and uses both SD cards and up to 4GB Compact Flash (or Micro Drives if you prefer). The down side is if you want a housing for this beautiful camera you will have to have one custom made as Ikelite decided not to make one for this model.

Ikelite do make it for the other Hard Drive JVC Camcorders click here but they are larger and do not have removable media or the 3CCD colour quality.

The only people I have found that make the housing for my camera is two companies in Japan

Zillion Japan

Div Japan

(but you have to send them your camera to have it sized up, so a lot of trust would be going in to the courier you use), or a European company MediaSub but they want approx £1,500 for the custom aluminium housing (but it is a lovely housing and would last ages), I am still saving for this option.

My suggestion is if you want the tiny camera and you don't need the 3CCD and you want to keep costs down then go for a Sony as they are cheap and the housings are easily available. If money if no object then the GZ-MC500 and the custom aluminium housing is a nice camera to go for.

If you are not looking for one for underwater I would recommend the one I have the 4GB Compact Flash card records about an hour of video and you can use a 1GB SD card to take all you photos, I would recommend either buying yourself a few more Compact Flash card for extra video or a portable hard drive to allow you to save the footage as you travel about. The down side I see to the built in 25GB ones is that all you video is stored in the Video and if it is lost you have also lost you footage, plus hard drive have moving parts which tend to break sooner than solid digital media.

Hope this helps a little.

Tim

[Deborah3108]

Thanks Tim. I'm afraid diving doesn't come into it! I'm am a snorkeller and that's my lot! Katherine has a still camera with the waterproof housing so this one will be more for the safari stuff that we'll both be doing.
I was hoping to avoid having to buy any sort of cards as extras but I had gone through the notion that if anything happened to the camera then all of my footage on the hard drive is lost.
I'm certainly no photography expert so the 3CCD bit has lost me! I just want to be able to video wild animals and Kenya basically. I currently have a Nikon Coolpix 2100 which is only 2 mega pixels but does me fine. I don't want anything posh. It was the hard drive bit I was going for and not having to cart anything else along with us.

Thanks,
Debbie

[DannyB]

Originally Posted by Deborah3108

Thanks Tim. I'm afraid diving doesn't come into it! I'm am a snorkeller and that's my lot! Katherine has a still camera with the waterproof housing so this one will be more for the safari stuff that we'll both be doing.
I was hoping to avoid having to buy any sort of cards as extras but I had gone through the notion that if anything happened to the camera then all of my footage on the hard drive is lost.
I'm certainly no photography expert so the 3CCD bit has lost me! I just want to be able to video wild animals and Kenya basically. I currently have a Nikon Coolpix 2100 which is only 2 mega pixels but does me fine. I don't want anything posh. It was the hard drive bit I was going for and not having to cart anything else along with us.

Thanks,
Debbie

I'd be a bit dubious of Hard Disk camera's I'd want to see what the quality of recording looks like first (view it on a TV not on the viewfinder on the camcorder). As for 3CCD, the bit of the camera that sees the image is a CCD, single CCD cameras have one that records every colour, 3CCD cameras have 3 sensors, one for red, one for green and the final one for blue. They will be higher quality but it depends what you want to do with it.

I have a Canon single CCD camera that is fine it records to MiniDV tapes which are quite small and if you get one that can do long play you can get a fair amount of video on one tape.

I like the Canon's they seem to give a good range from cheap but reasonable quality to expensive and near broadcast.

Danny

[johntemp]

Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD1 Camcorder

I like the look of this one, it is solid state (using 2gb sd cards) and can store 40 mins of High Definition video on a single card.

The picture quality is supposed to be superb, far better than the JVCs according to Stuff magazine.