Another which camcorder...

[chrisbr68]

Hi all. Looking at getting a new video camera. I have £500 to spend. Looking for the following main features:

Good in low light (including infa red)
MiniDV - seems to be no alternative right now
Small as possible
Analog in would be good

I basically limited myself to Sony, due to good experience with them, and poor experience with JVC. I would appreciate your comments, so unless anyone can make a better suggestion, my choice so far looks to be the Sony HC42E. I am not sure if I need the widescreen feature, but since I have a widescreen tv, and things are heading in that direction so far as I know.. I dont see it as a bad thing. Besides, I saw it for £380 which seems reasonable.

http://www.sony.co.uk/view/ShowProduct.action?product=DCR-HC42E&site=odw_en_GB&category=CAM+MiniDV

I basically want it for all round filming, including of course, lots of cars!!

Thanks for any advice/opinions.

Chris

[surfymark]

I have a HC42. I haven't used it all that much yet but I find it really is an excellent piece of kit. Really easy to use and good results. It comes with a full USB PC kit but I bought a firewire wire to connect it to make it a bit quicker! and it is simple to download your film to your PC. Although it does take up a lot of hard drive space.

I am on the look out now for a cheap (free?) editing suite to edit it and compress it ready to put on a DVD. The rest of the Sony software can do this but isn't really all that great but the camera itself, excellent!!

Hope that helps
Mark

P.S. Make sure you look on Kelkoo and Dealtime to find the best price. I ended up getting a three year warranty with mine and still saved over a hundred squids off what they wanted in the Sony shop!! And it goes without saying that Ebay is the best place for accessories but make sure you get genuine Sony brand new ones!

>> Edited by surfymark on Friday 15th July 10:27

[nick francis]

I got one of these last week, Its brilliant.
www.jvc.com/presentations/everio/

[jimothy]

surfymark said:

I am on the look out now for a cheap (free?) editing suite to edit it and compress it ready to put on a DVD. The rest of the Sony software can do this but isn't really all that great but the camera itself, excellent!!

I take it you don't have a Mac... iLife (£40) has movie capture, editing and DVD output and its very, very easy to use and very powerfull...

[surfymark]

Nope, PC only I'm afraid! Sorry for hijacking the thread!

[chrisbr68]

Cheers lads. Ive got firewire/premiere setup on my pc, so editing via that should be fine, although the USB will be useful sometimes I expect.

Mark, is this camera ok in low light conditions? A friends sony was 10x better then my old JVC, but I have read mixed views online... I would only use infared if its REALLY dark!

Thanks.