Camcorders: The Needs of the Many (page 2)

Intermediate Steps

If you've had a basic camcorder for a couple of years and are looking for something a bit more capable, we suggest a model with more manual controls. Some helpful controls include an exposure control and a manual shutter speed control. For exposure, we'd prefer an explicit iris control and a separate electronic gain control, but not all camcorders divide these two settings. A shoe for attaching lights or microphones is also helpful and versatile. We're talking about roughly $800-$1,200 here, but there are less expensive models that will fit the bill.

The Sky's the Limit

If you're a pro, you can get a lot of camcorder in a small package, all for under $5,000. Features like 3-CCDs, zebra stripe exposure indicators, manual audio level controls, XLR microphone inputs, optical image stabilization and color bar generators are easy to find in this year's crop of camcorders. A number of camcorders also have specialized features, such as 24P modes or high-definition resolutions.

The buyer's guides that appear with this feature will condense the feature sets on the camcorders currently out there into one list. You can use this as the starting point of your research and we are sure you'll find the camcorder that you need.

Charles Fulton is Videomaker's Associate Editor.