Category — Camcorder Reviews

I’ve heard of these simple, no-frills camcorders made by Aiptek, Flip, and Creative Labs. I guess that forced RCA to step up its digital camcorder game. They’ve created the RCA Small Wonder EZDVD2BD that comes with it’s own dvd burning station!

Am I the only one going, wha? Burning a dvd from your camcorder really isn’t that difficult, all you need is iDVD or Roxio and a firewire cable. But if you can snap a Kodak Easyshare digital camera into a dock and print pictures, then why not be able to burn camcorder footage through a dock. And if this RCA camcorder costs less than $200 bucks, that is an enticing deal for busy families who just want to record a special event and save it on DVD.

At the Black Ghosts concert last night, I saw a hipster with one of those neat-o vertical camcorders.

I think it was a Sanyo Xacti HD1000. It was so sleek and compact, it mesmerized me in all of its simplicity. It put my walkman cell phone camcorder to so much shame that I lost all desire to use it.

Most of the vertical camcorders I’d seen were those cheap Flip Photo or Aiptek ones you can buy at Walgreens. But the Sanyo models seem okay, almost cool even! They film in HD and use decently large flash memory cards. Now, if I could just find $600-$700 dollars lying around, I too could post youtube concert videos like this one.

Canon released their first line of HD flash camcorders this month, the Canon HF10 and HF100. According to this news source, the two HF models are about the same:

“both camcorders are basically identical, with each featuring Full HD recording (1920×1080 resolution), 12x optical zoom, and the ability to record footage at 24p and 30p frame rates. Optical image stabilization and a 3.3 megapixel CMOS sensor round out the camcorders’ features.”

The HF10 relies on internal memory and/or flash memory cards, while the HF100 operates on memory cards only. Both camcorders are on the pricey side. But since Canon is a reliable brand, it would be a worthwhile investment.

The Canon HF10 starts at $879.

And the HF100 starts at $1099.

While researching digital camcorders, I noticed that the product descriptions always play up the optical and digital zoom. But what’s the difference between the two types? Is one more important than the other?

From Cnet:

“As with digital still cameras, the optical zoom of a camcorder determines the number of times a camera can magnify an image through its lenses. Take note that this is different from digital zoom which simply takes a portion of an image and enlarges it, resulting in a loss of quality. Optically zoomed images enlarge the picture without sacrificing quality.

Bearing this in mind, it is important to look at the optical zoom power rather than the digital zoom rating on the camcorder to determine the actual amount of zoom you need. In fact, we don’t even recommend using digital zoom since it affects the quality of the video capture. Instead, look out for at least a 10x optical zoom lens which is commonly found on most camcorders today and would generally be more than sufficient for most users.”

Well, it looks like the optical zoom seems to be the most important. Optical zoom refers to the ability to preserve the image, while digital zoom is just the basic zoom capability of the device without regard to image quality.

Most camcorders have a optical zoom between 10x and 42x. And even better, many affordable camcorders have high zoom capabilities. Take this Sony DCR-DVD610 for example. It has a 40x optical zoom, while only costing around $294 - $352 bucks.

Many digital camcorders have still image capability. And since some camcorder consumers don’t need advanced features, they are perfectly happy to use a camcorder to take pictures.

It’s easy to use a time laspe setting on your camcorder to take pictures of the night sky.

Or maybe you want to video record a vacation or child’s sporting event, then you might be tempted to grab some photos with the same device. Adding the still photography feature seems to be pretty easy for most camcorder manufacturers.

When shopping for camcorders, it could prove useful to look for a camcorder with decent still image resolution. This term refers to the megapixel ratings, which is an important feature when looking at digital cameras.

Even though this sounds like a great bonus to any camcorder, I personally prefer to have my technology separated and take my photos with digital cameras. And it’s worth saying that most digital cameras have pretty decent video capabilities.

I guess it all depends on your level of use for each device. If you see yourself video recording most of the time and rarely taking still images, then maybe go for a Panasonic GS320.