Recommend your Camcorder please

jgilesslp

I am looking for something that is small, lightweight, user friendly and under $300 if possible.  I had a great small, lightweight one but it was not great in dim lighting and it erased my son's whole first year of life...not user-friendly! (Still fuming!) Please, recommend your's!  TIA!

newportbride715

We have the Canon HD Vixia HF100. It says "12X optical zoom" and HD CMOS on it as well....

I don't know how much it cost, it was a gift from my IL's.

DG1

Honestly, if I had it to do all over again, I'd just get a Flip Mino. Or maybe a Mino HD. 

We got a mino AND a "real" camcorder.  I think we've used the real camcorder twice in a year.  It takes much better video, but it's SUCH a PITA to download/edit/save to DVD/upload to youtube for grandma that we never even bother.  

The flip is *always* out, and we've caught so much cute video that way.  The regular Mino is $150 (I think), and the HD is $200.

For a "real" camcorder, I'd look at things like optical zoom (digital zoom is basically meaningless - on your PC at home you have 100x digital zoom), image stabilization, and storage (go for the hard drive storage, not the DVD or other removable media).

My mom bought us the "real" camcorder. It was about $400, and I feel so badly that she did buy it. I didn't know then what I know now, and I feel like we wasted her money.

ETA: As far as erasing the first year, that's horrible!  I would die.   With the flip, we regularly download video (SO easy!) to our home PC and then automatically back up online to jungle disk every night, just like any other PC backup (like DS's still photos).

jgilesslp

DG1....can you download these onto DVD?  That is why I had waited so long to download...was trying to fill up enough video to burn to a DVD....so stupid I know...and definately VERY upset about the lesson learned.  However, I was trying to download when it erased everything...it said something about converting and that was it...it was gone

daisyterp

Ditto the flip recc.  We have the flip (I think it's the mino) and it's so easy to use, small, convenient, etc.

We just take small snips of DD (her walking, talking, etc.) and put it up online for friends and family to see. 

DG1

You can download to DVD, yes.  We go through the flip software on the computer. It practically burns itself to DVD.

So we regularly (once or twice a week) download to the PC, then as-needed, download to DVD.  We've actually only done the DVD once, but it was super easy, and I was able to make 4 copies (great grandma, DH's parents, my parents, us) very quickly.

Most PCs have a DVD burner these days. I don't know if it would download directly to a separate DVD recorder. I suspect not, but you could easily check online - I'm betting there are Flip forums.