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Camcorder advice please
Big Dee
25-03-2010
Hi

I have a 8year old miniDV camcorder but want to change it to something better.

Can anyone suggest a decent camcorder which I can take on a 3 week family holiday soon to Florida?

If its got full HD, that would be great.

I guess the choice for storage is either onto an in-built HDD or memory card, but I don't don't know what the pros and cons are for each of them.
What's the max capacity for a memory card and the best place to purchase?
Is there some kind of category for these cards?

I've seen a Panasonic HDC-HS20EB in Costco for ~£423.
Don't know much about about it and not sure it's worth it as there are other cheaper camcorders (pocket type).
The camcorder would need to have a good long battery life.

This camcorder has a 80Gb HDD but unsure roughly how many hours of full HD footage can be recorded?
As I may not have access to a laptop whilst on holiday how would I store the movies should I go beyond the HDD capacity?
If I manage to borrow a laptop from a cousin, would that help?

I have also seen the JVC GZ-HD300 with 60Gb HDD for £352 at Costco.

Others being considered are flash comcorders:
Panasonic HDC-SD10
Panasonic TM10


Thanks.
Paulcan38
26-03-2010
All I can say is that the camcorder Kodak Zi8 is brilliant for the price and so easy to have about yourself you don't know you are carrying it - a bonus if you are taking your family to Florida,
Being only around £120 it films fantastic - you only have to go to youtube and type in 'Kodak Zi8 Florida' and you will see how good it is. Ignore the stuttering as that's only youtube compressing the video...it runs smooth. If you do buy it, I recommend Cyberlink Powerdirector 7 as it copes easy with the editing.
It also takes SDhc cards but DONT buy cheap Ebay cards over 4gb as I lost some filming due to crap (cheap) card. Ouch.
It's the best of the small pocket camcorders, one massive bonus is a socket for an external mic.
Sound like a 'fanboy' don't I?! just think for the price and the ability to have it in your top pocket is brilliant AND great HD footage.
Have good time in Florida!
Edit: just looked at footage shown in Youtube...the zoom is not brilliant as the older ones used to stutter but it is easliy fixed with a simple firmware update on the Kodak site.
sickparrot
30-03-2010
Most hard disk camcorders have an SD slot too, so if you run out of hard disk space you can just start shovelling SD cards into it. I have a JVC Everio 30GB, in 2 weeks in Orlando I took just over 7 hours so I did't need the SD slot but it's there just in case.
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