Long Life Camcorders
Camcorder advice – please help!?
What’s the difference between these pocket camcorders like the flip and the more traditional ones like the sony handycam? Is the flip only for very short clips or something?
I want a camcorder which I can record long amounts of film, which has a very long battery life and rechargable batteries – must last as long as possible, and also the recording medium (hard drive? mini dv?) must allow a long amount of recording. It doesn’t have to have a lot of bells and whistles. Something I could bring out at christmas and record throughout the day.
It should be easy to transfer films to a mac or pc and then burn to dvd, and should be small and easy to take out and about. The flip looks good and small and basic but It doesn’t look like I can make more than short clips. is this so?
Any suggestions? Between £100 and £350 would be good!
The differences between the pocket cams and the traditional ones are pretty big. The pocket camcorders are very limited in features, and use some type of memory card, or internal HDD. Depending on the size of the memory, it could hold a few minutes, or hours.
as for what type of cam, mini DV would be the most reliable, but it is a little tougher to transfer to a computer. It requires capturing through a video software, like Windows Movie Maker, or iMovie on the Mac. It also requires an IEEE 1394/Firewire/iLink cable. The good side of MiniDV is that you will have a hard copy of the footage, and the tapes are cheap to acquire (stick with one brand to avoid problems with the record heads). I would stay away from HDD cams. It could cause problems, and are not as fast at Flash Memory or DV tape in recording. The next best medium is Flash memory. But memory cards are more expensive. This is the easiest way to transfer to a computer. Each time you start and stop a recording, it is saved as a separate file, so this already can make it easier to find what you want.
Don’t know what to suggest but I’ve had good experiences with Sony and Canon. I’m currently using the Canon HV30 HD MiniDV camcorder. It’s really good and pretty advanced. Got it for about U.S. $600
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