Here is the deal I have a new born baby and the wife wants a camcorder. I will probably be the one using it the most, and I have no camera / camcorder experience. I am kinda partial to Sony but am open minded to other brands. I think I want the HD kind, but am unsure about if that's overkill or not. I will also like to possibly be able to use it for Acurazine meets and such, particular Skyline Drive meet. Price range lets say 900.00, would prefer not to spend that much, but there are deals to be had out there.

I would like some of your guys ideas / suggestions on this please

Thanks Steve

 

Have you read previous camcorder threads? I'm pretty sure there's at least four of them now. Lots of good info in them.

 

I read this one
https://acurazine.com/forums/cameras-photography-44/digital-camcorder-recommendations-721377/

but I am still reading the other threads I am coming across.

 

Ok I read a bunch more threads, I have two things

1 Seems like alot of the threads are just old, and I say this because you guys point how often the items change.

2 Billiam can you point me in the direction of something to read to dumb it down for me so I can be more informed. Im reading these threads and I unfortunately am lost. I have just never had the need to know about this stuff till now.
Thanks

 

I'll do my best but I sort of stopped paying attention to the hardware after I purchased my camcorder so I'm really not up to speed on the camera models currently available or even what the best reference sources currently are. With a $900 budget, I don't think you'll have any problem finding a camera you like as long as you stay within the consumer product lines. That includes HD by the way.

The biggest concern I would have still remains what I mentioned in some of the previous threads. That being your ambition to edit the footage. The current state of HD can really throw you some curve balls if you want to edit the footage and not feel like you're being tortured while doing it. If you really don't care too much about editing, then IMO there's little reason not to go for an HD camera. Even if you do care about editing, the obstacles are overcome by having sufficient computer resources at your disposal. That may mean more $'s though.

Ultimately, your priorities will likely dictate. If I were getting a camcorder primarily for recording my kids, I'd probably want to make sure I was capturing the highest quality footage I could afford even if that meant I wouldn't be able to edit the footage for a year or two when I got my computer caught up. Granted, even if that happens to be your priority, the spouse may have her heart set on sending Grandma and Grandpa nicely edited DVDs of Christmas and birthdays.

I have some additional detail on the editing stuff partially written but I probably won’t be able to get it posted until later tonight or tomorrow.

 

Thanks
I have been looking at this one today
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/...52921665842120
I plan on going to some stores this weekend to play with some of them and ask questions.
I only directed the question to you because you seemed to have a lot of knowledge pertaining to this from all the other posts I read.

The editing aspect of it maybe / maybe not I dunno.
I can tell you I have a

24 inch Imac
2.8GHz Intel Intel Core 2 Duo
500 Gig Hard drive
4 Gig of Ram
CS4 Master Collection