![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnridleyI ordered a camcorder today, after a couple of weeks of research.
It's an unfortunate time to be in the market. HD is the big thing, but hasn't gotten cheap yet. The non-HD market is mature, so the only research being done there is how to build them as cheap and crappy as possible. Most manufacturers only have a single "high end consumer" camcorder in the non-HD market; a 3CCD unit with not much sexy to it. In fact they seem to have completely given up on injecting any sexy into the non-HD market at all. And the 3CCD cameras are generally within spitting distance of low-end HD pricewise, so I decided to just stay with cheap, use the thing for 3 or 4 years, then go HD.
I've been a Canon fan for years, my last camcorder was a ZR80, which were (relatively) cheap at the time but did pretty well. I beat the hell out of it and it finally died. I went a year by dropping back to my old Hi8 camcorder, which works pretty well, but when I was DVD-ifying some 13-year-old tapes a couple of weeks ago, I noticed significant color shift, and decided to get something new (and digital) for this year's vacation.
Also, the new units shoot in 16:9 widescreen native, which I like.
MiniDV is still the only way to go, at least unless you're ready to spend big bucks and get a hard drive based HD camcorder. DVD camcorders are just weak unless you're really not picky about image quality and don't mind stopping to change discs every 20 minutes.
I'm not a huge video user, so I didn't want to go over about $300. Canon's current ZRs in that range are pretty much crap. They don't even have lenses threaded for filters, so no protective glass over the lens. This is important to me; I dropped my last ZR when at berzerker 2 years ago while it was running, picked the thing up, and it had a huge ugly scratch right across the clear filter. I unscrewed it and kept shooting, and replaced the $15 filter a few days later. I'm not going without that again.
Also they've reduced the camcorders to nothing but a cheap plastic shell around as little frame as possible, and as a result the motors are quite noisy and everyone complains about hearing them on the audio all the time. Nobody has external microphone inputs anymore either, except the bottom-of-the-line Canon ZR, which kept one because it's used widely in education and it's a requirement there for purchase.
Anyway, I finally wound up ordering a Panasonic PV-GS85. I stepped up from the GS80 not because of the still frame capability, which is worthless and stupid, but because the 85 has a video light. It's just a bright white LED, but it's something at least, and it was $15 more.
The final nail in Canon's coffin was that the cheap Panasonics have optical image stabilization, rather than electronic. This is very appealing to me; OIS works better in general (though I haven't had experience with Panasonic's version) and it doesn't cut your imager resolution down like electronic stabilization does. It's ironic, because for years Canon was the way to go for optical image stabilization, but now I went away from them partially to get the feature that for so long they pretty much owned.
I wound up ordering the thing from "Warehouse Deals" which is Amazon's "scratch and dent" arm. The one I got said nothing wrong except it was open box, no mention of damage or missing parts, and it was $212 instead of $270. I've never used them before but I guess I trust Amazon at least to take it back if I'm not happy. We'll see. I wouldn't have done it except I can live without the thing on vacation if it shows up broken, and I ordered a spare battery, tapes and stuff elsewhere, so I can live with some missing bits.
It's an unfortunate time to be in the market. HD is the big thing, but hasn't gotten cheap yet. The non-HD market is mature, so the only research being done there is how to build them as cheap and crappy as possible. Most manufacturers only have a single "high end consumer" camcorder in the non-HD market; a 3CCD unit with not much sexy to it. In fact they seem to have completely given up on injecting any sexy into the non-HD market at all. And the 3CCD cameras are generally within spitting distance of low-end HD pricewise, so I decided to just stay with cheap, use the thing for 3 or 4 years, then go HD.
I've been a Canon fan for years, my last camcorder was a ZR80, which were (relatively) cheap at the time but did pretty well. I beat the hell out of it and it finally died. I went a year by dropping back to my old Hi8 camcorder, which works pretty well, but when I was DVD-ifying some 13-year-old tapes a couple of weeks ago, I noticed significant color shift, and decided to get something new (and digital) for this year's vacation.
Also, the new units shoot in 16:9 widescreen native, which I like.
MiniDV is still the only way to go, at least unless you're ready to spend big bucks and get a hard drive based HD camcorder. DVD camcorders are just weak unless you're really not picky about image quality and don't mind stopping to change discs every 20 minutes.
I'm not a huge video user, so I didn't want to go over about $300. Canon's current ZRs in that range are pretty much crap. They don't even have lenses threaded for filters, so no protective glass over the lens. This is important to me; I dropped my last ZR when at berzerker 2 years ago while it was running, picked the thing up, and it had a huge ugly scratch right across the clear filter. I unscrewed it and kept shooting, and replaced the $15 filter a few days later. I'm not going without that again.
Also they've reduced the camcorders to nothing but a cheap plastic shell around as little frame as possible, and as a result the motors are quite noisy and everyone complains about hearing them on the audio all the time. Nobody has external microphone inputs anymore either, except the bottom-of-the-line Canon ZR, which kept one because it's used widely in education and it's a requirement there for purchase.
Anyway, I finally wound up ordering a Panasonic PV-GS85. I stepped up from the GS80 not because of the still frame capability, which is worthless and stupid, but because the 85 has a video light. It's just a bright white LED, but it's something at least, and it was $15 more.
The final nail in Canon's coffin was that the cheap Panasonics have optical image stabilization, rather than electronic. This is very appealing to me; OIS works better in general (though I haven't had experience with Panasonic's version) and it doesn't cut your imager resolution down like electronic stabilization does. It's ironic, because for years Canon was the way to go for optical image stabilization, but now I went away from them partially to get the feature that for so long they pretty much owned.
I wound up ordering the thing from "Warehouse Deals" which is Amazon's "scratch and dent" arm. The one I got said nothing wrong except it was open box, no mention of damage or missing parts, and it was $212 instead of $270. I've never used them before but I guess I trust Amazon at least to take it back if I'm not happy. We'll see. I wouldn't have done it except I can live without the thing on vacation if it shows up broken, and I ordered a spare battery, tapes and stuff elsewhere, so I can live with some missing bits.
