Buying a Camcorder

Hal Robertson
December 2003

Wouldn't it be great to have a new camcorder? Of course it would. The good news is that regardless of your experience level or the depth of your pockets, there's a camcorder out there that doubtless suits your requirements. In fact, the cameras made today easily outshine those from just three or four years ago, so if you've held off from buying until the price went down or the quality got better, now's the perfect time to invest in a new camcorder.

A trip to your local electronics Mega-Mart can be a little intimidating for the first-time buyer. There are so many options, features and formats. Which items are important and which are just frills? How powerful should the zoom lens be? Is there a difference in quality between Digital8 and Mini DV? Should you trust the salesperson with the pocket protector or the one with long hair and a nose ring? Don't panic. Choosing a camcorder is easy when you understand what you need and compare that to what you're willing to pay. Whether you're a casual shooter or a serious pro, this article will help you find the model that best suits your needs.

First-time buyers often fall into the category of casual shooter. The casual shooter is looking for something to record family events, such as birthdays, holidays, vacations and special occasions. These shooters have little interest in making money with their purchase. They just want to point and shoot. There are dozens of models available that suit these requirements perfectly.

When you go shopping, you'll be bombarded with dozens of buzzwords and jargon. Only a few are relevant. For instance, there are five different tape formats - 8mm, Hi8, Digital8, Mini DV and VHS-C. The first three formats use 8mm tape to record different types of video. From a functional standpoint, they amount to good, better & best. Buy the best one you can afford.

Mini DV (DV25) is the dominant format for consumer camcorders and for good reason. If you're having trouble justifying the expense of Mini DV (starting around $600), check out the September 2003 issue of Videomaker for seven excellent reasons to consider Mini DV as your format of choice. That said, the analog formats produce better images today than in the past and VHS-C is still a viable alternative. Another advantage is that VHS-C tapes pop into an adapter for easy viewing on your VHS VCR. Unfortunately, if you want to make a copy for aunt Edna, you'll still have to cable the camera to a VCR.

Most entry-level camcorders don't have manual controls for audio, focus or white-balance, so consider any extra features a bonus. Still, point-and-shooters, by definition, don't want to monkey with these sorts of things, so fire away.

All that entry-level stuff sounds fine, but serious hobbyists want some spunk (and some manual controls) in their new camcorder. If that sounds like you, we'll call you a serious hobbyist. As with our previous category, there are many camera models that fit the bill nicely. First, if you're really serious, a digital camcorder is a must. Not just for the improved video and sound quality, but for some other important reasons. It's likely you'll want to edit your videos. If that's the case, a FireWire interface is highly recommended. FireWire is intimately linked with the Mini DV format and can be found on all Mini DV camcorders. Whether you use a Mac or a Windows-based computer, FireWire transfers audio and video data out of - and back into - your camcorder. Another important reason to go digital - especially Mini DV - is compatibility. With Mini DV as your format of choice, you'll produce videos that can be played on a variety of equipment, including some professional broadcast equipment.

Even though your skills have surpassed the typical vacation and birthday shoot, perhaps your available funds haven't caught up just yet. No problem. It's quite possible to find a camcorder to produce champagne images on your beer budget. Most entry-level camcorders use polycarbonate lenses, but a recent trend is for camcorder manufacturers to include premium optics as the price goes up. An example is Sony's use of Carl Zeiss lenses in almost all models. The improved quality of glass translates to more uniform images, better exposure and color and a flatter field of view around the edges of your video.

While we're on the subject of lenses, most cameras have a large emblem or sticker that proudly displays the words like "700x Zoom" or some such nonsense. This number refers to the digital zoom magnification and is as meaningless as any buzzword you'll ever read. The only zoom rating you need to know is the optical zoom range. This range refers to the actual zoom length of the lenses in the camera and is important in determining how far away you can be from a subject and still fill the screen. In this case, a larger ratio is better, but the largest you'll likely encounter is 20x (20:1).

As a serious hobbyist, you also need an external microphone jack and a headphone jack. This allows you to use better, more directional microphones in your videos, and monitor the sound with headphones. Nothing screams amateur louder than audio from an on-camera microphone.

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