CAMCORDERS BUYING GUIDE

Throughout this guide dashed links will take you to filtered product lists.

 

Introduction

Camcorders are going through a major transition away from analog format (VHS, Hi-8, DV) in favor of digital format: mini-DV tape, Digital8 tape, hard drives, mini-DVDs, and flash memory. Most camcorder makers are discontinuing their analog camcorders in favor of digital – digital camcorders can produce superior pictures and CD-quality sound, and make it easier to transfer videos to your PC because your PC is also a digital machine.

Choose a Format

The biggest decision in shopping for a digital camcorder is deciding on the type of storage. There are several choices, all with plusses and minuses.

MiniDV and Digital8

The most popular format for consumer camcorders is the MiniDV, or digital video. This format stores digital signals on a tiny cassette tape that holds an hour or more of recording, depending on the video quality setting you choose. MiniDV delivers a high-quality picture and CD-quality sound, the tapes are convenient and affordable, all computer digital-video editing programs can handle the format and can perform frame-by-frame edits, and the final edited videos are of high quality. A close relative is Sony's Digital8 format, which also uses tiny cassettes. To view the tapes, you plug the camera into your TV, or transfer the video to your PC, or burn it to a DVD. You can use the tapes as long-term storage, or reuse them once you've created a DVD.

Mini-DVD

Some cameras burn the video as you shoot onto a small DVD disc built into the camera. It's just like a regular DVD disc except it's only about three inches across, and holds from 20 minutes to an hour of recording, depending on quality. The two big advantages of this are the ability to pop them right into your DVD player and view on your TV; and the convenience of being able to swap a blank DVD into the camera whenever you need it. A tradeoff is trying to figure out which kind of DVD format your DVD player can handle: DVD-R and DVD+R (write-once), or DVD-RW and DVD+RW (rewritable) formats can be read by most modern DVD players, while DVD-RAM, also rewriteable format, is recognized by a limited number of DVD players. Check the documentation to your DVD players to see which DVD formats they can handle (sometimes the formats are on a sticker attached to the front of the player), then get the camera to match. Mini-DVD camcorders sometimes take a bit longer to start up than other formats, and the camcorder takes several minutes to "finalize" the disc before you can play it in your DVD player.

Hard disks

Increasingly popular are hard-disk drive cameras (HDD), which contain small 30- or 40-gigabyte hard-disk drives like those on your PC, and can capture several hours of video depending on the quality settings you choose when shooting. The advantages are many: rewriteable, fast, random access to clips, high capacity, fast startup. The tradeoffs are mainly that you will need to offload the videos to your computer or DVD burner when the drive fills up, which is harder if you happen to be traveling. As with other formats except mini-DVD, to view the video you have to hook up the camcorder to your TV, or move the video to a PC or burn it to a DVD directly.

Flash Card

Flash camcorders use little flash memory cards like the ones you use in your digital still camera. Camcorders using these cards start up fast, you can swap in a new memory card quickly when you need it, and the cards are impervious to shock. Capacity is the big tradeoff: A 2 GB card can hold 20 minutes to an hour of filming depending on the quality setting you choose; larger-capacity cards are also available. Again, you'll need to transfer the results to your PC in order to burn them onto a DVD so you can play back on your TV.

Combo Units

There are also combo units that have a hard drive and also a DVD burner built in. You can use the hard drive for instant recording, then offload to the DVD disc when ready. This is a way of never running out of hard-drive space. Of course, these combo drives cost more. There are also camcorders that combine a hard drive or DVD burner or MiniDV tape with a flash-card slot, which is used to hold still pictures when you use the camcorder as a digital camera.

High-Def Camcorders

How about HD, or high-definition (hi-def) recording? If you've got a HDTV, or plan to get one soon, you should consider HD camcorders. These will be quite a bit pricier because they are capturing five times or more the data in each frame than regular TV images. There are two popular formats here, called 720p and 1080i; they are roughly equivalent, enough so that video experts argue about which is better. If you have an HDTV, get the camcorder HD format that matches: 720p or 1080i. (To make sure you are getting a real HD camcorder and not just a marketing term, look for "720p" or "1080i" in the product specifications.)

HD of course lets you shoot gorgeous videos – if you have the skills to take advantage of that. (If not, you'll get a high-resolution badly shot video.) The tricky part is that you can only store your hi-def video on high-def discs that use high-def DVD players – of which there are two, incompatible, formats: Blu-Ray, or HD-DVD, and good luck trying to guess which will be the winner. You can also buy camcorders that record hi-def onto DVD in the camera, using a new format called AVCHD; these discs can be played back to your HDTV using a Blu-Ray DVD player. Talk to the salesperson at the store to make sure you've got all the bits and pieces lined up. (You can also play back from the camcorder directly to the HDTV.)

If you want to edit your high-def video on your PC, you will need the fastest PC or Macintosh available, with lots of RAM and lots and lots of hard-disk-drive space, because hi-def video files are several times larger per minute of recording time than regular SD (standard-definition) video files. You'll also need to check that your video-editing software can handle hi-def video; most can't yet.

Converting Analog Tapes

But what to do with the old analog videotapes you have lying around if you are upgrading from an analog camcorder? If your old analog camcorder still works, you can transfer all your old tapes to DVDs (directly if you have a standalone DVD burner, or through your PC). Or you can look at digital camcorders that use a digital version of the same size tapes, and also claims that it can read your old analog tapes. For example, the new Sony's that record to Digital8 will play back analog Hi8 tapes. Unfortunately, none of the new digital cameras can play back the old VHS or VHS-C tapes, nor the original 8mm tapes.

Can I just use the video feature of my digital still camera?

One of the happy surprises of the digital still camera is the video feature. You can switch from snapping still pix to taping a few minutes of video at the flip of a switch. For many people, this is all the video capability they need. The advantage is you only have to carry around one, tiny, device. But the video quality is quite low limited compared to a camcorder: It looks like a Web video in those little windows on your PC. If you want to capture a lot of video, at high quality, you need a camcorder. If you want lots of features for controlling how the video comes out, you want a camcorder. The video feature of your still camera is like the camera feature on your cell phone � nifty, and handy for capturing unexpected moments – but not intended for anything serious.

Decoding Key Features and Buzzwords

There are lots of choices in digital camcorders today, many features, capabilities, and benefits, in a range of prices. Most of the consumer camcorders (those costing well under $1000) are lightweight, easy to just point-and-shoot, produce high-quality pictures, and offer lots of features and options. (Prosumer and hobbyist filmmaker cameras, by contrast, head into the thousands of dollars, are larger and heavier, and produce even better pictures, in the hands of a professional or serious hobbyist. They also require a lot of work to master.)

This list of features will help you decipher the product descriptions you find on this site so you can make a good choice.

Megapixels/Resolution

Recording modes (quality level)

When you record, you can choose a quality level. The highest level is usually that 500 lines of video the best cameras are capable of. Lower levels of quality, with fewer lines, won't look as good (though they won't look any worse than regular broadcast TV), but they will let you record longer on the same disk or tape or flash card.

Flip-out LCD Display

The larger and brighter the LCD display on your camcorder, the better. It's also useful to have a viewfinder, too, even if it's only in black-and-white – especially if you are in bright outdoor conditions that make it hard to see the image on the LCD.

The LCD also shows various settings and status reports; some have control buttons on the LCD so you can change the same settings. Some offer touch-screen controls on the LCD.

Autofocus/Manual Focus

All camcorders can autofocus on the scene you're shooting. If you want more control, especially in tricky conditions, look for manual focus as well – a ring-focus control is best; some cameras use a button-toggle for zoom instead.

Zoom

Most camcorders offer optical zoom up to about 10X, which can be handy. If you are shooting sports or wildlife, it may be worth your while to pay more for a camera that offers higher optical zoom (or, rarely, offers add-on lenses to boost the zoom). For most of us, though, 10X is fine. "Digital" zoom is achieved by digitally enlarging the image, achieving "zoom" levels of 400X or more � but what it's really doing is blowing up the image, which degrades the image quality. It is also really, really hard get a steady pictures when your camera is zoomed out 400 times – you'd absolutely need a tripod. A shaky, poor picture is probably not what you were going for. Most buyers should ignore the digital zoom most of the time.

Image Stabilizer/Anti-Shake

Get a tripod when you buy your camcamera. Really – you know what it's like watching ten minutes of someone's shaky video. A tripod will really help make your video masterpieces more watchable.

No? Too much trouble lugging around and setting up a tripod? No room to set it up? OK, so camcorder makers now build in an anti-shake features, also called an Image Stabilizer, that takes most of the shake out of your video. Image stabilizers work pretty well – though if you really do zoom in to 400X, no image stabilizer is going to save you. There are optical stabilizers (more expensive) and digital stabilizers (which work almost as well). Some people feel that the very smallest, lightest camcorders are harder to hold steady because they're so light; on the other hand, a bigger camcorder seems to get heavier after you've been filming for a while.

Remote control

If you put your camcorder on a tripod, you can get in the picture yourself using a remote-control feature available with some camcorders. You can also set up the camera at a good location, and switch it on and off when something interesting happens. For example, you can set up the camera on a tripod up near the altar and get good shots of the bride and groom taking their vows without you having to be standing up there spoiling the moment.

Ports and Editing

Some camcorders offer some in-camera editing capabilities. With hard-drive and mini-DVD +-RW discs, you can erase scenes. There are limits, of course, but you can do some basic scene arranging, cutting, and deleting. You can offload your video into a desktop computer and use video-editing software to turn out a masterpiece. There are many video editing programs aimed at the casual moviemaker, as well as high-powered editing programs for professionals and serious hobbyist. You can burn your edited video onto a DVD.

If you have a mini-DVD camcorder, just "finalize" the DVD disc in the camcorder, then pop it into the DVD slot on your PC, copy to your PC, and edit. For a flash-based camcorder, put the flash card into a flash-card reader on your computer.

If you use some other camcorder format, such as a hard drive or MiniDV, connect the camcorder to the PC using either Firewire or USB ports and cables. USB is a common connector type, present in all PCs, but USB is no match for the enormous amount of data in a video recording. Get a camcorder that uses a Firewire connection for offloading. (Firewire is also known as IEEE-1394, or "iLink" on Sony camcorders and computers.) All Macintosh computers have Firewire ports built in, so all you need is a Firewire cable. If your PC doesn't have a Firewire port (most don't), just buy an inexpensive one at the computer store and then open up your PC and insert the card properly. (Or get your kids to do it for you.)

Once you've got the camcorder connected by Firewire connected to the PC or Macintosh, start your video-editing software and look for a "capture/download from device/camcorder" menu item that will start the downloading process for you.

Backlight compensation

Some cameras will have a "backlight" button that lets you lighten the picture. When you are videotaping an outdoor party and realize the setting sun is putting faces in shadow, and the camcorder darkens the picture even more because of the bright light it's reading, you push the "backlight" button, the camera realizes its mistake and opens the aperture a bit more, and the faces will be better lighted.

Lights

Most of us shoot videos with available light – and it shows. Some camcorders come with built-in lights, so you can at least add a bit of brightness to an otherwise poorly lit scene. There tradeoffs: The lighting can be garish, just as snapshots with the built-in flash can look garish. And the built-in light eats battery power. One option for better video is to use external light. This can be as simple as a separate light on a stand, or as elaborate as specialty lamps which use the best type of lighting for the digital camcorder, and can be set to bounce off the wall or ceiling instead of glaring directly at the subject, or even use "bounce" filter devices to soften the lighting. Fortunately, these can be purchased later, as you get the hang of your new camcorder and its quirks.

Night/Low-Light/Low-Lux/Infrared recording

Camcorders are very sensitive to light, but in low-light conditions the quality of the image rapidly degrades. But you can't always shoot in well-lit conditions – when the kid is about to blow out his birthday candles, you can't switch on the floodlights. So many camcorders have a feature that makes it more sensitive in poorer lighting conditions. The picture won't be as good as if you had good lighting, but it will be visible.

Many cameras also have a "night vision" setting for taking pictures in what is really total darkness, like outside at night. To accomplish this, the cameras switch on an infrared-sensitive feature that lets it capture infrared images (in some cases the built-in camcorder light emits invisible infrared radiation). It's remarkable how much you capture with such a setting, but the images are often strangely lit – they play back as black-and-white, with some strange elements, such as people with monster-movie white pupils and pale lips. But you do get a picture.

Microphones

The built-in microphone in most camcorders is adequate. But you don't have much control over how your video sounds. Better are camcorders that offer specialized sound-recording features like a microphone "focus" that lets you zoom in on where the camera is pointed, so the mike will tend to pick up what's right in front of it instead of the sounds around it.

Best is an external microphone. Some more expensive camcorders have a "shoe" on top where you can mount a "shotgun mike" that really focuses the sound capture to the front. Or you can plug the cord of an external mike into the camcorder. You can even get lapel mikes (lavalieres), and wirelessly capture the sound, just like on the TV news.

If you go these routes, get a camcorder that also has a "headphone" monitor plug so you can plug in headphones and hear exactly what your camera is picking up. (You'll be surprised.)

Title Generator

Some camcorders offer the ability to overlay a few words onto the image at the beginning of a scene, like the opening title of a movie or a scene in a movie. This is a way of quickly getting basic titling onto your videos without having to offload to a PC and run editing software.

Digital stills

You can take still pictures with your camcorder. The quality won't usually be very good – it's usually similar to the picture you get from your cell phone. Some camcorders now offer higher-quality still pictures of 3 megabytes and more, which is a good level. To keep the still pictures separated from the videos, some camcorders have a slot for a flash memory card where the still pictures are stored. For most people, though, use your still camera for quality still pictures.

Editing hi-def

Most video-editing software can handle the various types of digital video captured onto the various types of hard drives and tapes. But you will find it more challenging to edit high-definition video. First, only some software can handle hi-def, so you'll probably need to buy software especially for this format. Second, hi-def video files are enormous, taking up much more space than regular video files. Mainly that means that you will need the fastest PC or Mac you can buy, with lots of RAM and a very large hard drive. Unless you bought your PC or Mac in the past year or so, you will likely need to invest in an upgrade.

Conclusion

Don't let the large number of options bother you too much. Just remind yourself that modern digital camcorders all take good videos, offer many automated features, and are reasonably durable and well made. You can't really buy a "wrong" camcorder, even if you're buying your very first camcorder, you'll be pleased with the your ability to capture your life as you live it.