Recommend me a compact digital camera and a HDD camcorder

[J B L]

Hello,

Our first baby will be with us early February and my wife is asking Santa for a compact digital camera, good quality, easy to use and small. She doesn't want to bother with the DSLR to take picture of the little mite which is fair enough.

Whilst i'm in AV purchase mode, i'd like to get even poorer by getting a nice HDD camcorder. I have seen many in airports at reasonable prices but I don't know where to start and what to look for. Am I right in thinking: HD, 1080p to start with? What size hard drive gives you how much recording time? As you can tell, I'm a bit light knowledge-wise on the subject.

Thanks for your help and suggestions.

[marctwo]

Many of the new generation of digital cameras can shoot hd video. You might find this a good compromose rather than lugging 2 devices around wherever you go.

I got MrsTwo a Panasonic GF1 to take snaps and video of our babies. It 'only' does 720p but this is plenty. 1080p seems overkill and will take up HUGE amounts of disk space.