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Been looking at getting a new camcorder since my Son broke the last one. I previously had both a Canon miniDV tape and a Sony disk camcorder, and now the market seems somewhat confusing with tape, disk, hdd, flash, and then AVCHD and other formats, and on and on...........
If I was to sum up my last two recorders, the tape was awful because in this day and age they take way too long to load up to your PC. The other side of the coin was the disk machine that was as easy as pie and ideal for me to finalise the disk and pop it in the DVD player. I love that so much being a family man who never seems to find time anymore to fart, nevermind load and edit film footage on PC and burn DVD's. Now I am looking at HD camcorders, and unless I buy one with BluRay mini disk, the capacity of the regular 1.4GB mini disks is pathetic when filming full quality, giving just 14 minutes of film per single sided disk. Sadly a BluRay disk camcorder is out of my budget.
For my budget of around 400 quid, I am drawn to the Canon HF100 that records to high capacity SD cards. Seems like it's a decent machine for the money, and when added to a few 16GB cards that can take 2 hours of full quality film and then stuck straight into the PC card reader, it seems like an acceptible compromise.
I am pretty much sold on the HF100, but I would still like to hear any opinions/experiences any of you may have with this camera or others.
Cheers,
Simon.
Quote:
Tape-based camcorders are headed the same way as dodos.
Quote: Do you have one Carabosse ?
Tape was awful. That's why I bought the disk machine when the Canon broke. No way was I going down that route again. Way too much hassle, not to mention chewed tapes. I did pay 1000quid for that one too.
Yeh that's why pro spec camcorders still use mini DV.
Quote: Yeh that's why pro spec camcorders still use mini DV.
Sure, but for the consumer market (ordinary man on the street) it's not an attractive option when you consider the SD/HDD alternatives - ease and speed of loading to PC, no tape wear, ease of wiping data, no need to keep stocks of tape, etc.......
Quote: Yeh that's why pro spec camcorders still use mini DV
It is quite true that some video pros still do weddings etc using standard definition (which is what miniDV is). But that will not last very long, as their clients are getting better quality from consumer-level HD cams. Heck, I get better quality from my stills compact which does HD video as well! 
Pro spec these days includes card-based camcorders, incidentally. Tape is winding its way into oblivion.
Quote: Just leave them in hard drive actually. Using Mac, don't have blu-ray ROM.
OK. I wondered because I don't know anything about the latest camcorders. I was wondering how a HD full quality film looks burned to ordinary DVD disk. I have a BluRay player and fullHD TV, but no way of burning a BluRay disk.
SD5 is still available on Amazon UK anyway.
Quote: You are reducing the resolution, but HD reduced to standard def is said to be marginally better than something recorded in the latter.
Cheers Carabosse. That is what I wanted to hear. So now I have to go away and work out if there is any point to getting a HD camcorder. That is unless it starts becoming a bigger purchase than I had intended or wanted, i.e. also forking out for a BluRay burner for my PC.
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