Camcorder Buying Guide

The era of digital camcorders

Although VHS camcorders were the standard for quite a while, digital camcorders have almost completely taken over the camcorder market in recent years. In fact, you may be hard-pressed to find more than a paltry offering of new VHS camcorders. So unless you're only planning on watching your videos on a VHS player, then it may actually be easier and less expensive to find a digital camcorder that suits your needs. Fortunately, the features of digital camcorders -- as well as their ever-declining prices -- should make it clear that digital is the way to go.

So how do I pick a camcorder?

A simple approach to picking a camcorder is to decide on the features you want from your camcorder, pick a price that you'd like to pay, then find the camcorder that provides the best compromise between features and price. Of course -- and this is always important when you're shopping for electronics -- it helps to read customer and other reviews to find out what other people have discovered about a particular product. So while you're researching your new camcorder, here are some features to consider:

Picture Resolution

When you record with a digital camcorder, the image enters through the camera's lens and is sent to the imager, also called the image sensor, which converts the image to a digital format that the camera can use to store the video. The quality of the imager plays a large role in determining the quality of your video, so you may want to check the maximum resolution that the camera is capable of (which is ultimately determined by the imager) to make sure you can get the resolution you're expecting.

Recording format

In the days of VHS camcorders, options for recording format were slim -- there were cassettes, and there were smaller cassettes. With digital camcorders, there are a few more options. First off, there are DV (digital video) tapes, although nowadays you'll generally just see the miniDV format. MiniDV cassettes are inexpensive but will only record about an hour of video at standard quality and up to 90 minutes at reduced quality. While some users prefer editing miniDV recordings because of the high quality at which it's recorded, others dislike the fact that it takes so long to transfer your recordings to the computer for editing -- basically, if you record an hour of video on miniDV, it will take an hour to transfer it to your computer. And if your miniDV camcorder doesn't have Firewire or USB 2.0, then you may need a video capture card (available among Overstock.com's selection of video cards) for your computer.

Next, there are digital camcorders that record to flash disks such as SD (Secure Digital) and SDHC (SD high-capacity) cards. SD cards are relatively small in capacity, no bigger than 4GB and are often just used to store still shots. SDHC cards can be found with a capacity of up to 32GB, with capacities of up to 1TB possible in the near future. Both types of flash card can be exceptionally convenient because they use a file system that your computer recognizes, so you can use the flash cards to easily move video and stills between your camcorder and your computer. Many camcorder models have a flash slot in addition to another recording format, good for transferring your video to a flash card to take with you. Some models feature a flash slot along with a small amount of internal memory; these are often the least expensive camcorders. It's probably a great place to start if you're looking for something simple and you're not sure what kind of options you want in a camcorder. One major difference between flash card-based camcorders and miniDV camcorders is that may you see a variety of video formats used with flash drive camcorders, unlike miniDV camcorders that consistently use the miniDV format. Often, however, you won't have to concern yourself with the specific format unless you decide to edit your video.

Next, there are digital camcorders with a hard disk drive, or HDD. These models may have a variety of output options and possibly a flash drive or other recording format in the camera. As with flash drive-based camcorders, the choice of video formats may vary with HDD-based camcorders. Some camcorder users dislike having an HDD in a portable device because of the perceived fragility of HDDs; if you're also concerned about this, you may want to look for an HDD-based camcorder that goes to great lengths to protect the hard drive, such as with motion sensors and impact protection.

Finally, you can find digital camcorders with DVD or Blu-ray burners in them. They often use a smaller disk than the standard DVD or Blu-ray disk size, and you'll need to use the writable formats of these discs. (Check with the manufacturer to know exactly which media to use with your camcorder and consider checking reviews for how well different brands of disks have worked for other users.) A camcorder with a Blu-ray burner will typically be able to burn to DVDs as well. Some of these camcorders will include an HDD and may allow you to do some in-camera editing of your video before you burn it to the disc.

Outputs

Aside from the recording medium, cameras usually have some combination of video and data outputs for connecting to a TV, your computer or another video device. If you want to transfer video to your computer, you should consider a camcorder with either a Firewire or USB 2.0 output. If you're not sure whether your computer supports Firewire, you can look into adding a Firewire interface to your computer or just go with the comparatively ubiquitous USB 2.0 interface.

In addition to Firewire or USB 2.0 data output, your camcorder may support any combination of the standard video formats, such as component (i.e. Y/Pb/Pr), S-Video and composite outputs.

Digital zoom versus optical zoom

When it comes to determining the final quality of your video, the camcorder's zoom can play a surprisingly large role. An optical zoom focuses the lenses of the camera on a distant (or close) point with no loss in visual quality. A digital zoom, on the other hand, basically takes the image after it's been processed by the imager and enlarges it. This means that if the resolution or quality of the video isn't particularly good, then a digitally-zoomed picture will just be an enlarged version of a sub-par picture. On higher-end cameras with very high-resolution imagers, the digital zoom is less of a detriment since the image will be of a high quality. However, if you want to zoom without any loss in quality, then you should consider a camcorder with an optical zoom. Many camcorders have a 10x optical zoom (called a "ten-times" optical zoom), but you can find camcorders with an optical zoom as high as 35x.

Note that some digital camcorders, particularly the inexpensive kind, offer no optical zoom at all and rely completely on digital zoom. If you foresee yourself doing quite a bit of zooming in your video, then you may want to look for a high optical zoom to make sure that you maintain the quality of video that you expect.

Viewfinder

This one has become a bit of a no-brainer in recent years -- nearly every consumer camcorder you see nowadays has an LCD viewfinder. Gone are the days of the eyepiece. Today's camcorders let you see what you're recording while being aware of your surroundings. With the ease of an LCD viewfinder, perhaps the real question is why you would consider a camcorder without one!