How about a Flip HD pocket camera, about $200?

Amazing reviews, see if this could be a fit.

You probably want to look into HDV vs AVCHD first.

AVCHD is verrrrrrry demanding on PC power when editing. HDV is only verrry demanding.

For HDV cameras, the Canon HV20/30/40 are well thought of.

Woops. Sorry for being so general. Ok, let me tell you what I currently have and why I'm looking, maybe that will help you guys to have an idea what to recommend to me.

I've been using the Panasonic PV-GS200. It is a SD, 3CCD, 700X optical zoom, 2.3 megapixel, miniDV...camcorder. I really like this camcorder. For a consumer level camcorder I think it has pretty good color. It doesn't have very good low light capabilities, but I'm not sure any consumer level camcorder will. It's low light capabilities have been a bit of a problem. I am researching what kind of consumer camcorder to get because this camcorder actually belongs to my parents and I am getting married. So my soon to be husband and I are going to need a little consumer camcorder to take on trips (we're about to go to Hawaii next month) and basically capture our adventures on. I love video editing and cannot see living without a personal use camcorder. I usually end up editing most trips and making a little highlight video from it afterwards instead of having pictures in dusty books somewhere in the cabinet.

When my parents bought this camera (7 years ago...maybe longer), it was around $850 or $900, I think. I am looking for something in the same range that puts out great consumer level footage, but is up to date as far as capabilities go. I want an HD camcorder, preferably not one that records onto any type of tapes or DVDs.

Does that help? :)

Agree and this is an issue worthy of far more weight than it gets. I'm somewhat taken aback by the number of people who buy into the AVCHD cameras knowing full well all the problems with editing the format and then once they've bought the camera complain about how much Vegas/Ppro/FCP suck at editing AVCHD.

We have the now defunct Sony HC5, apart from the lack of external mic input I have no complaints and it's done admirable service as a B camera beside my EX1. The HC9 is the later version of the same camera. Those and the older HC7 that we have where I work have logged many, many hours, quite a few of them underwater.

If you're prepared for the pain of AVCHD the new CX512 ticks all the boxes for feature overload and it does have an image stabiliser better than you'll find on any camera. It is incredibly SMALL, we bought the model with 64GB of internal memory, that alone could be enough to cover most family outings and if you get lost the camera has GPS.

Bob.

Oh yeah, about HDV vs AVCHD. I've used both. I'm in the process of purchasing a Panasonic HMC 150, so I'm going to be working with AVCHD. So I don't think that would stop me from buying a consumer camera, but it can definitely be more of a pain.

I wouldn't buy a camcorder that doesn't have GPS!!! When all else fails pull out the camcorder and find your way home...Hopefully you don't have a dead battery at that point...haha...

Why did they start making camcorders with GPS in them?

I have an HC3 older version of the cam farss was mentioning. use it as a Vacation cam, little league cam, strapped it on the chassis of cars, , gaf taped to one of those bomb robots, before I knew it had its own cam duh, sent in on a snowboard journey and use it as a deck for hundreds of hours of z1 stuff. Awesome little cam,, oh and use it for decent still pics.

Leslie, there are a lot of choices. Lately, I've been somewhat fascinated by the relatively new Sanyo Flash-based camcorders, the Xacti VPC-HD2000 and the VPC-FH1. They are the first consumer camcorders that can shoot 1920x1080 at 60 progressive frames per second and they do it using h.264 compression at 24 Mbps. They also do stills with a native resolution of 8 megapixels. I haven't pulled the trigger and bought one to play with yet, but that could happen at any moment.

http://sanyo.com/xacti/english/

They have gotten quite decent reviews at Camcorderinfo.com, including good low light performance.

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Sanyo-Xacti-VPC-HD2000-Camcorder-Review-36280.htm

Newegg has the VPC-HD2000 for a little over $500.

The VPC-FH1 has the same specs in a more conventional camcorder shape, it's currently $410 at B&H Photo with free shipping.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/600626-REG/Sanyo_VPC_FH1_VPC_FH1_Dual_Camera_Xacti.html

By the way, as to why they started making cameras with a GPS in them. In the case of Sony camcorders, the built-in GPS receiver automatically adjusts the cameras clock to the correct time zone and lets you view your exact location on the camera's LCD map display. Not only that, but you can also tag your recording location. Tagging allows you to review and playback video and still images by using the Map Index function on you camera or PC via the included Picture Motion Browser Software. I'm a GPS nut, so I think this is pretty cool.

I am very happy with my Canon HF11. I can slip in the pocket of my cargo shorts. 24 mbps AVCHD with great zoom and image stabilizer. Has built in 32GB and takes stills too. Low light could be better.

I just don't get all the problems people have with AVCHD. I've been editing it since the purchase in March and I've had no problems whatsoever. And I'm running on a laptop, Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz, 8 GB RAM (no video card... although that really doesn't matter).

Yes, I know, 8 GB RAM. But back when I had 4, performance was still comparable. Granted, I'm also using a 64-bit system, which I'm sure makes a significant difference. But still, it's just not that much of an issue at all.

Steve

Hey thanks John for this info on Sanyo's Flash HD in a prosumer camera. I've been using a Canon FS-100 (the first to use a flash card for recording) but it isn't HD - still takes pretty decent video though...and has a 48X zoom...but I will be checking out these Sanyo cameras....I love the ease of flash cards for recording - no extraneous noise - no moving parts!

Good luck Leslie in your search...Hawaii is awesome!!

Sony SR11 is a nice consumer camera that has good color and a sharp picture - I would recommend since you don't mind AVCHD - Now that Vegas Pro 9 is out - I don't have any problems editting / rendering AVCHD. It worked in version 8 - just a bit more straight forward in Version 9 - and faster too.

It can be had in your price range - $800 or so, maybe less. Plenty of storage space - It took me a year to fill up the 60GB Drive. Lots of nice Accessories for them too. I have the waterproof case, an extra battery, and Sony wide angle lens as a few examples.

I can definitely recommend the latest Canon AVCHD. While HDV may be easier to edit, AVCHD editing for family videos can be very easy too, just don't use Vegas 9, stick to 8.0c, Vegas 9 sucks for AVCHD. But the advantages of AVCHD are many including being able to record more than 2 hours straight in the best quality, transferring to the computer in far less than what tape would take, no tape motor noise, etc. And Canon offers the best picture quality. The only drawback is that you cannot use it as a dashboard camera, not only the AVCHD models but the HDV ones as well, unless they changed drastically in the last versions.

Well, here's a purely personal take on this - I've had a Panasonic GS-200 for some years now which I used as a personal camera (ie holidays, family etc) and also as a 'B' for my wedding shoots - I have a Panasonic DVC-30 which is my 'A' camera for all paid work. One of my criteria for the replacement was that it had to use mini DV tape (call me old fashioned, but much easier IMHO to archive)

I went through the agony of which way to jump when it came to upgrading my GS-200 and finally settled on the Canon HV40. I have not yet used it in 'anger' but all of my test shooting shows it to be a superb little beast. It does not perform well in low light (a very subjective term I know) but then neither did my GS-200. But in all other areas it is streets ahead of my GS-200.

Have a trawl through the Canon forum at

http://www.hv20.com/

and also the Canon section in this (Panasonic) forum

http://www.pana3ccduser.com/

Wayne

I judge the Canon Vixia HF S100 to be the best consumer camera for personal use. It's relative weaknesses are image stabilization and low light performance, but in most cases the image quality is phenomenal for a sub-1kilobuck camcorder.

I do find anomalies and issues working with AVCHD in Vegas Pro 9.0b 64-bit. The bitrate for rendering out of Vegas appears to be effectively capped at 16 Mbps, vice the Canon's 24 Mbps recording. And importing the Sony AVCHD renders from Vegas into DVD-A 5.0b results in errors that prevent blu-ray mastering. I have had to re-render to MPEG2 for all my HD video projects thus far. I hope this forum can clue me in to solutions for AVCHD to blu-ray encoding.

I think most of the new cameras are more than adequate for personal use (eg. casual video for friends and family). That's what I recently got a Sony HDR-XR500V for, and it's worked well. In lower light, at +18dB gain you see some noise but it's as good or better in low light as anything in its class at the moment. Previously I'd been using a larger HDV camera, HDR-FX1 which has more manual controls but the little XR500 is very well designed for casual spur-of-the-moment stuff. The image quality is embarrassingly good, compared with the older prosumer stuff just a few years older.

By the way, anyone know of a tool to export the Sony .modd metadata file with GPS position info, into a standard format like GPX ? (it's actually a XML text format already, but I'm lazy...)

My quad core-duo 2.83 GHz, 4 GB, WinXP 32 has no problems playing AVCHD, but editing native in Vegas 9b is frustrating (slow to start playing, soon reaches 29.97, but framerate stumbles down at times). So I transcode to MPEG2 and edit that. A minor annoyance but doesn't much affect my workflow; 95% of the total time is still the manual editing work, as opposed to render time.

I think if you factor in the cost of a transcoding application like Cineform into the price of your next camera you can just ignore all the "whoa is them" attitude of AVCHD haters. I use the aforementioned software to fly along in vegas. Yes, there are formats that work more easily but I think re-using memory cards that are 1/20th physical size of a tape and copying the contents of said media in a matter of minutes rather than 1:1 time spans is far more attractive to the travel/video enthusiast.

I have a canon HF series camera and I'm very happy with it. Also consider a WA filter.

Good luck.

IAM4UK,

Could you possibly be a fellow video enthusiast in Kentucky? :)

Anyhow, if you render to MainConcept AVC, it's possible to choose higher AVC bit rates. I never use the Sony AVC codec anyhow...

You can type your own bit rate in.

Steve

We are talking about home use here right ? Then by far my most important considerations are:

- Is it small enough to fit in my pocket so I can always have it ready

- Does it start up fast to catch spontaneous moments

- Is it easy to download the movies and archive

For me the specifics of relative picture quality are largely irrelevant against these criteria.

Just what I think too.

That gives us i.e. Sony T500, Sony TX1, Sony WX1 or Canon SX200.

I have used the T500 for nearly a year now - 5 long travels, several thousand videos and stills - it takes very, very sharp video
Low Light clips seem pretty easy to improve significantly using Neat Video.
Download raw original footage here http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/30264/Video%20fra%20T500.MP4
Because it looks like an innocent "Tourist snapshot" and has 5 x zoom you might even record video where you normally would be banned with a normal looking video camera (Paris Metro, Folklore narrow streets etc)

I have tried the Sony T900 - disappointing, smeared video - but have ordered the new Sony TX1 (and also Sony WX1 for even better results when the hide-factor is not needed) and which both seem to be even better than the T500.

Hello Leslie, and our favorite Latin lurker, et al.,
not sure if you want a durable camcorder that takes stills; or a durable still camera that takes video. . . perhaps the Olympus Stylus TOUGH might fit your needs... only 3X zoom - nothing to compare with your 700X optical (really digital) zoom... really only 10X optical...
Not to thrown anything more complex into the mix... if you're only looking for quick videos and not full length motion pictures - it might fit the bill.

I'm just saying. . . (wink)

Until that time... Earl J.

Only 640X480, so not for movie quality - but certainly vacation events and sharing on the Internet quality. . . and so rugged to boot... you'll not find that toughness in a camcorder... not that you beat up a camcorder - just an easy device to carry around and have at the ready in almost any environment - including on boats and underwater...

http://tinyurl.com/ctypqg

I'm just saying. . . (grin)

Until that time. . . Earl J.