Hi,

I'm looking at buying my boyfriend a camcorder for his birthday. He's into photography and wants to have a go at the videoing side of things. I was looking at the camcorders available in Tesco and the one i liked the look of was theSony DCRHC51E MiniDV Camcorder which is £159.99.

Would anyone be able to tell me if this is a good choice or if there is a better camera to go with which would cost around the same?

Thank you and hope you can help

Dot

(Does this camera record straight onto DVD? wasn't sure )

It depends, if your camera is just for family stuff and you don't wanna spend more than £159.99 that probably is a good choice but it doesn't record to dvd but a dv cassete, probably you should reconsider your choice if it is a dvd camera that you want .



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Yeah i think he wants it for family stuff like holidays etc

I think like you said its gonna be worth looking around for a different camera - especially since he wants one that records to DVD.

Thank you for helping

Dot

Mini DVD or hard disk is probably what you are looking for, that's if your boyfriend doesn't want to get into editing. Although using a program called Sony Vegas (the latest version) will allow him and maybe you might get hooked on it aswell to get into editing and putting a more polished version of the movie together and cut out all the boring bits, out of focus shots and shots of the ground when you thought the camcorder was switched off. Also look at Jessops, Currys and Argos websites to see what they have. Stick with well known brands such as JVC, Canon or Panasonic and you can't go wrong.

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I've had a look at mini DV/DVD camcorders which wont suit us as we dont own a VCR and also DVD camcorders may not work well with a mac (staff in jessops told me this)

So when thinking about it i thought that a SD camcorder may be a better choice as my boyfriend can upload the videos to his mac and them burn them onto DVD if he wanted to.

Could anyone recommend a good quality SD camcorder which would be at a reasonable price? (£150-£200)

Dot

If you wanna burn your videos onto dvd then you should buy a dv camcorder and you don't need a vcr for that,who told you this ?
You can plug your camcorder to your tv using av port and watch your footage , using firewire port you can download the footage into your computer and later on burn it to dvd and if you want before that you can do some editing to remove unwanted parts .

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I thought with a mini DV recorder being a tape you had to plug it into your tv then record onto another tape or put the tape into a bigger one and play it that way - my uncle used to have one.
whats a firewire port? Would this be compatible with a mac?

Lol, that's the old cameras that had a cassete, dv tape is a smaller tape totally different .
Yes it is compatible with mac, it is what the professionals use and so do we .
A firewire card let's you download your footage from your camera into your computer without loss of quality . Don't forget to by a cable along with your card so you can plug both of them .
Official Startech.com European distributor and reseller
Check that website so see what is a firewire card .

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Please, please, avoid DVD camcorders like the plague. They are horrid inventions.

First off, you will typically pay a premium for the discs.

Secondly, they often don't work as you think. For example, with my dad's one you have to "close" the disc, which means you cannot write anything more to it, before it will play in a DVD player or allow you to rip to PC.
Annoying if you just recorded five minutes.

Thirdly, you may well need special software to pull files off

Finally, they offer little to no advantage in terms of size over miniDV.

Either get a miniDV or a solid state (eg SD card) camera.

If he is into sports such as mountain biking or snowboarding then this is an excellent SD card camera. Most places seem to be doing them at about £250, but I have seen them for £200 and less occaisionally.

I would also factor in the cost of discs / tapes vs SD card. With an SD card camera you buy a card or two then keep re-using them (Copy data off onto computer at home). This makes Total Cost of Ownership lower for SD card cameras. Also the camera I linked will connect via USB to pull the files off.

i really like the look of that cam for him - i think its similar to the one i was looking at in Jessops.
Do you think its worth havng a look at them in store before looking for them for good price deals on the internet?