Camcorder Buying Guide 2007

Every year, the major manufacturers drop about sixty to seventy camcorders on the public. Factor in the budget and no-name manufacturers and that number easily rises to over one hundred. How’s a person supposed to make sense of this populous market and find the right camcorder for them? It’s not too hard, really. The key is not about finding the best camcorder overall, but finding the right camcorder for you. So what kind of user are you?

Point-and-Shoot
A point-and-shooter has little interest in the finer points of optical mechanics and exposure values. This is the user who only takes the camcorder out a few times a year for birthdays and holidays. Of course, it’s our deepest wish that every point-and-shooter has aspirations for more, but let’s be honest; this group makes up the majority of camcorder owners.

A good camcorder for a point-and-shooter is easy to use. The menu design should be intuitive and the button layout should be uncluttered and well-labeled. Most importantly, the automatic responses to changing light and focus must work well under a variety of conditions. Sony tends to be the leader in this category. Nearly all their camcorders feature an “Easy” button that shifts it into full auto mode. Canons are close behind, with great menu designs and excellent auto responses. When shopping by format, DVD camcorders generally offer the simplest means of playback. Simply finalize the disc, remove it, and pop it into a compatible DVD player. Be sure to check on that compatibility before you buy. Blank DVD come in different flavors (i.e. DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, etc.), and older home DVD players can sometimes choke on certain types of discs.

Budget
Everybody wants to save money where they can, but when it becomes the chief concern, consumers must move with caution, lest they be saddled with a cheap piece of junk rather than a great value. Going with a major manufacturer tends to be the safest path here. Sony, Canon, Panasonic, and JVC all have camcorders in the lower price range that will produce satisfactory or better results. Beware of multi-function devices that claim to excel at video, still photos, music player, and more. The jack of all trades is the master of none. Even a low-priced camcorder can be a sizeable investment for a lot of people, so be sure to investigate its compatibility with the technology you already own. If you finally take the plunge only to discover that the camcorder doesn’t connect with your TV or play in your DVD player, you’re not saving any money at all.

Eager Pupil
We are all students long after we leave school. Buying a camcorder is a great way to learn about filmmaking, video journalism, video editing, optics, or a variety of other skills. Of course, you may not be an expert quite yet. A good camcorder to learn on combines ease of use with powerful manual controls. These camcorders allow you to move one step at a time and flex your knowledge bit by bit. Canons, Panasonics, and JVCs (in that order) tend to fit the bill. They feature controls for aperture, shutter speed, and more – tools that allow you play with depth of field and other cool tricks. If you don’t know what that means now, don’t worry. You’ll find out soon enough.

Power User
The power user wants it all – top performance and the best manual controls. The general feeling here is that this type of camcorder will cost you. The manufacturers have to justify their pricing structures across so many camcorders, so they often reserve certain features (crucial features, we believe) for only the most expensive models. These features might include better focusing tools, more external buttons rather than menu-based controls, or shutter speed and aperture control. Each manufacturer, however, structures their features differently. Panasonic packs in the manual controls. Sony keeps it light, holding back on a lot of goodies until you step up to their “prosumer” models in the $3000-plus range.

Video performance, of course, is at the heart of any camcorder. The price-to-performance relationship is clearer than that of special features. You truly get what you pay for when it comes to performance. More expensive camcorders almost invariably have better imaging chips and processors. You’ll see variances between similarly priced camcorders from different manufacturers – sharpness, color saturation, etc. – but within a single product line (i.e. all Canon DVD camcorders), the image quality moves with the price.

Aspiring Filmmaker
For film school students and the DIY crowd, a number of factors need to go into the camcorder buying decision. First of all, there’s the budget. The gap between a $1000 camcorder and a $2000-plus camcorder is huge. If you can afford better, it’s generally worth it because a filmmaker’s video will be under closer scrutiny than the average.

Secondly, the final display format needs to be decided in advance. Is this movie intended for the big screen, the small screen, or the web? Knowing this will have a huge impact on which camcorder format you need. Big screen productions require the highest resolution possible, and most consumer-grade camcorders won’t cut it. But for budget, small screen productions, a lot can be done with a modest camcorder.

For any production, the post-production process – editing – is where the movie really comes together. In order to make this as smooth as possible, the preferred format is tape, either standard definition MiniDV or high definition HDV. These formats have been around the longest and have the highest compatibility with a sundry of software. Dollar for dollar, MiniDV and HDV camcorders also offer the highest video quality compared with equivalent formats like DVD and flash memory.

Finally, aspiring filmmakers should be aware of older camcorders that no longer get front page coverage on magazines and websites. There are a lot of great, old workhorses out there like the Panasonic AG-DVX100, Sony VX-1000, and Canon GL2 that can be purchased new or used at a good price.

Video Bloggers
In terms of video quality, we’re still in the infancy of internet video. One look at YouTube makes it clear that a fuzzy, pixilated image is the norm. How can these be made to look better? It’s a little complex, because the video always has to be compressed down to save space and download time. One thing is for sure – starting off with the highest quality video is vital. Half of the problem is people settling for low quality camcorders and webcams. When terrible looking footage gets compressed down even further, well… you have YouTube as an example.

Depending on the camcorder’s format, you can decide which is more important to you as video blogger, careful editing or speedy transfer from camcorder to computer. If you really like to put time into editing and want the highest quality video possible, tape is generally best. Sometimes speed is key, especially for journalistic video blogging. In that case, a camcorder that records to an internal hard disk drive (HDD) or flash memory card is more useful. A simple USB connection is all that’s required to ship footage over to a computer for upload. Many manufacturers are now including software to expedite the uploading process for YouTube and other video sharing sites. Be sure to experiment before hand with the step-by-step upload procedure. Sometimes video clips can be saved in a strange file type that can’t be universally recognized by your software. In those instances, a middleman program might be necessary to convert files to a more common type.

Shopping Smart
One last tip – familiarize yourself with the retailer’s return policy before making the final purchase. Don’t discard or destroy the original packaging until you’ve made sure everything works and that you’re happy with the product.

The right camcorder can be lots of fun. The wrong camcorder will only cause frustration and become an expensive doorstop. Know how you plan to use it before buying and you just might find the perfect match.