Les Jones: Which Camcorder Should We Buy?

September 22, 2004

Dear Lazyweb > Which Camcorder Should We Buy?

So we're going to get a camcorder. Any advice? I've looked over the Consumer Reports ratings. I stopped by Circuit City after work and tried a few models. The Panasonics seemed to be the most user-friendly, and they all had 20x or better optical zoom. The Sonys weren't real user-friendly, but the image on the LCD looked great and had terrific color. Does that correspond to the final image? Beats me.

What do I need to get? Does a triple CCD ($$$) improve the image quality?

UPDATE: Thanks to John Addis for the expert advice in comments. I just ordered a triple CCD Panasonic GS200. Camcorderinfo.com ranked it seventh out of 79 camcorders. What's amazing is that the six higher-ranked camcorders cost two to three times as much as the GS200.

I wanted to buy locally, but Circuit City was charging almost 50% more than online retailers. The cost of overnight FedEx was a little less than what I would have had to pay just in sales tax locally. Thank you, online shopping!

Posted by lesjones

Comments

Yes, the triple CCD dramatically, shockingly improves video quality. I'm an independent filmmaker on the side (when I'm not offering $10,000 rewards for magic typewriters hehe) and filmed 90% of my recent movie The Bells of Beaumont Tower (spartancity.com for more info) on a one CCD, which died, so I bought a Sony VX-2000 to film the remaining 10%. The difference is astonishing. If I had known it would have been that dramatic (literally between home movie quality and broadcast quality), I would have just spent the two grand to start with.

Posted by: John Addis at September 22, 2004