Well, you'll likely get a different answer from every single person for this question as to which is the 'best quality camcorder' for your money.

Probably the best 'first' advice I can give would be to look only at miniDV camcorders. Forget those that take the little DVD disks. It a nuisance editing the footage you record. not tried it but basically it's the same process as trying to 'capture' and edit footage ffrom a purchased DVD disk. Not much fun apparently.

Well, on to the question I suppose. I have two camera and can highly recommend bot of them. I have a Sony TRV33E (E is for Europe I beleive). This I liked and consider good quality because I've never had a dropped frame from it and it has a true widescreen mode which I was particularly interested in. You'll easily get this years quivalent camera for your budget.

The other camera is Sony's new HDR-FX1. Not sure you'll get it for your budget but as an HDV camera recoding at 1440x1080 (in widescreen) I certainly consider it a high quality camera. It's hardly palm sized though so might be off the chart considering your 'not production sized' comment.

sony do have a smaller HDV camera in the works though.

For your budget I'm sure you could get a good deal on a Canon XL1, considered a VERY good camera. Used in a number of movies.

As for palm sized camera. probably anything at around $500-$600 will liely be fine.

__________________
I'm not young enough to know everything!