And on a more serious note, I'm in the initial stages of helping my brother research digital video cameras and I'm wondering if you guys can help. Sites that do comparisons, personal experience, recommendations, reviews, or all of the above would be much appreciated.

For the record, we're looking for something $1000 or less, no frills, high quality picture, and easy to use. Thanks.

 

as a sony guy, i would say go sony...

look, sony has a digital 8 format (D8) that uses standard HI8 mm tape. so if you have a bunch of them laying around, or your work uses D112 meter backup tapes, they work too...

the other option is the mini DV tape format that everyone else uses. D8 is a sony thing.

otherwidse, all digicams under $1000 are about the same at the price level... i.e. a $999 sony is about the same features and stuff as a $999 panasonic one... etc...

btw, the mini DV tape costs a little bit more than the HI8 mm tape. but the D8 cams tend to be bigger in physical size, since a mini DV tape is about 1/3 the size of a HIGH 8 tape...

 

oops, one more thing. digital is digital. since both are digital, the quality is now based on the OPTICS of the camera. so the better CCD and the more numbers of CCD will generate a better picture.

so it's not like one format is better than the other.

 

OK, cool. re there any websites that have tested the various cameras to find out which ones have better picture quality?

 

You could try cnet.com. They have reviews and links to places to buy from.

I usually buy my stuff from www.bhphotovideo.com. They have decent prices and list the specs for many brands.

 

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/

 

Dope, that's what I was looking for. ldivinag i have a couple questions for you. First off, I have been trying to figure out what your handle is for EVER and it's bugging the hell out of me. What is it? And second, if you were to buy a new camcorder for under $1000 which one would you buy? Also, which one(s) do you you own?

EDIT: And how much do you have to spend to get NightShot or the equivalent nightvision type feature?

 

hee, hee... one thing i HATED about i-club (and the other one...) is that they dont allow signature.

'ldivinag" has been my standard username for everything.

where i went to school and work now (cal state hayward), we had a naming scheme for usernames.

since we were a novell shop, back in the do$ days where everything was limited to 8 chars, we used the first letter of the first name and the next 7 chars of the last name.

presto. kinda makes it easy to remember usernames for the gazzilion numbers of forums/bbs/websites....

anyway, if i were to buy another cam these days, now this is ME, i would consider one of the higher end PRO-SUMER type cames like the sony dvx-2000 or the canon XL-1/GL1 which uses the mini DV format.

while the tape costs are up there, i would shoot, then archive to footage to hard drives. edit and then ship.

as for the nite vision, it come standard (at least mine did). and i have YET to use it in actual production. mostly to peek on neighbors... JUST KIDDING!!!! (besides i have a gen 3 nite scope for that... )

gosh, i havent even taken a peek at any new camcorder these days. my sony TRV-510 (IIRC, bought almost 3-4 years ago, when the first D8 cams came out) has been OUT occationally. i hate shooting family parties and crap like that. i guess it's me. i kinda tend to use my dig still cam instead.

i used to use SVHS to record and edit, so this is the first time i shot digitally and edited (if you have a fast connection, here's my last project).

best bet to go to like frys, best buy or circuit city and play around with the cams.

see what feature you NEED. sometimes crap features will sell you and you find that you probably needed the other.

1 thing i found, i bought the top of the line model with a color mini view finder (as opposed to the big main LCD) and i really didnt need that. plus, i think i woulda saved a few bucks i got the model with a smaller LCD...

oh well...

 

so what's your last name? divinagola or something?

 

here:

http://www.cbe.csuhayward.edu/staff/index.shtml

 

THE THIRD... hell yeah, can't beat that...

in HS i used the Sony DVX-1000s we had... they were by far the best DV cameras i've ever used... So freakin clear, and when i edited on the Macs using Firewire, there was near zero loss of quality...

However, that's out of Tims price range as of 2 years ago... check it out Tim, get something hi-tech and big for the money... those tiny *** DV cameras seem pointless to me.

-Gagan