Need Advice: Camcorder Purchase

[midnitesigma]

I realize this probably isn't the best place to post a question but I wasn't sure which thread to post this in. If I'm wrong, I apologize.

I'll be moving away to school shortly and I'm thinking about getting a camcorder to document some of my adventures. But with all the different types of camcorders on the market I'm not sure which one to get. There's miniDV, DVDR, HDD, HD, flash, etc... I'm looking to buy one that will last me a while before it becomes obsolete so I'm thinking High Def is necessary. But in terms of memory, should I get one with a harddrive? flash drive? dvd drive? miniDV? I'm not sure. If anyone has any knowledge of this sort of stuff or have any comments or would like to ridicule this topic please feel free to do so.

Thankz

[Jay-D]

http://tinyurl.com/6ocvfo

Flash gets my vote. You didn't mention how much you want to spend? I was thinking about getting one of these and a fake microphone and doing Tom Green style interviews at truckstops. You know those interviews he used to do with random people on the street and he'd take the mic and start shoving it up their nose, in their ears etc. This is ultra cheap too at around $120

[Tachyon]

I like mini DV tapes because you can hold like six hours worth of digital decent quality tape in your pocket at a time and they're fairly cheap. If you get a flash one make sure it doesn't do random bullshit like save in a lossy proprietary format. 

[midnitesigma]

My bad Jay-D, the budget will hopefully be around $1000 if I don't spend it all on hot pockets and grits. I like the flip video concept but I'm worried it won't record at a decent quality. At this point if I wanted to upload videos to youtube I could record video via my canon Sd1000 camera which comes out in decent quality. I'm looking to make recordings at longer lengths. And yes, I'm going to do a crapload of fake interviews.

@Tachyon - the miniDV is great and I've worked with those before but HDD camcorders(ones with 40GB) can record up to 8-9 hours with High Def quality.

I'm thinking to be future-proof a high-def would be necessary.

[Tachyon]

I wish I had HD, I use a Cannon Elura I bought for like 400 bucks a few years ago now I think. I like tape because I can always carry more with me, as opposed to drive space where if you're full that's it (unless you have cards, and I don't trust those).

[midnitesigma]

miniDVs are portable and can be stacked, which is a good point. It's just that I don't seem myself filming for more than 7 hrs tops. I'm not a film producer, and I just want to document certain things and experiences ;-) j/k.

In my past experience with miniDV the transfer are quite slow, I figured with a harddrive camcorder the transfer speeds would be a bit more tolerable. Plus, though I'm not certain I'm hoping that the harddrive camcorders will optimize the data so that it won't take up too much space on my 750 gig home server.

btw, I don't trust them flash cards either. they're so small if I were to switch'em mid shooting I might drop'em somewhere.

[Tachyon]

Yeah transfers are a bitch with miniDV since you've got to play them at realtime, but if you set it up then go to sleep or do something else it isn't that bad.

[midnitesigma]

yeah that's a good point. I guess I can set scheduler to do that for me while I sleep. hmm... miniDV camcorders are slightly cheaper too so I might just have to go with that suggestion. I could put the saved money into storage purchases.

[legend813]

Get one of these Sony camcorders as seen in this video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMt319qh1xA

They can be found in any TA travel center around the nation. They are cheap man cheap, use SD cards and take D cell batteries.

[midnitesigma]

I was considering that one, it's the Sony SR11 I think with 120GB harddrive + 10.2mp stills. It's a tad over $1000, I think it retails for $1,399.

[legend813]

I was considering that one, it's the Sony SR11 I think with 120GB harddrive + 10.2mp stills. It's a tad over $1000, I think it retails for $1,399.

I use it to make porn.

[midnitesigma]

Pls. encode into Divx and upload as a torrent.

[legend813]

www.hillaryclinton.com

[midnitesigma]

(-_-)* I'm sorry that I asked.
What was seen cannot be unseen. epic self-destruct!

[rbcp]

I'd stay away from any kind of tape.  Real-time video transfer sucks.  I've got a mini DVD camcorder right now, which lets me reuse the same disc over and over.  And I can just put the disc into my laptop drive and copy the videos I need.  Using a disc is good for keeping backups too if you're bad at backing up your data.

A hard drive camera would be cool too, but the ones I've seen are kind of bulky.

And HD?  What for?  That just seems like overkill and a waste of money.  There's nothing wrong with DVD-quality videos.  Even if you do happen to play your videos on a 52" HDTV, are you really going to notice?