Cheap Camcorder

i know i'm not videophile expert. but i have been wanting a digital camera to keep in the car for random photo opportunities. while searching for something inexpensive i found this digital camcorder for a really cheap price. and in store Best Buy matches their online sale price---of course. so less than $150 i got a HD camcorder. i've been playing with it for about 15 minutes and its pretty incredible---for what you pay.
https://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8775943&type=product&id=1204332008907

Just a point but at that price it's not going to be very good quality for HD video, just so that you know what to expect. Good HD cameras are around $1000 or so.

^^^yup i knew what to expect. i'm not a photo jockey like Maulfan so this will suit my needs perfectly... just keep it in the glove box for random excursions. however, i was thinking about buying a blu ray camcorder the first of the year.

this actually isn't a bad device!!! i was out working on the car today and decided to have some fun with the camera. my only gripe is that the zoom is a little crappy, but other than that its pretty good.
https://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v66/hairlesswookiee/?action=view&current=STIVideo.flv
https://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v66/hairlesswookiee/?action=view&current=ExhaustcClip.flv

yeah that is nice quality. p!tu needs this camera.

looks pretty good to me...........

$145 at Best Buy

Hey Wookie...do you still like this camcorder? I'm about to pick up one but want an inexpensive one like this one.

I have that camera, it was on sale at Target a couple weeks ago for $120. I highly recommend it.

When everything is lit well enough, you get a great HD picture. Low-lighting isn't so great, but with digital cameras, it never is. If you like to wave the camera around a lot in your hand like a crazy person, you'll drop some frames, but I don't think most non-crazy people will find this problem. Also, the mic on the camera isn't so great, but it's definitely useable. Almost forgot, optical zoom only. Optical zoom is never a good thing, but this camera handles it nicely.

Aside from the great picture, another plus about this device is it's size. This thing is small enough to stick in a purse or cargo pants pockets. It's about the size of many point and click still cameras.

It records to Quicktime format on an SD card, so I dunno if that is a problem for Windows users, but the movies imported into iMovie for me with no problem. If you're using iMovie, remember to specify that you are working with HD or Widescreen DV video, otherwise you'll end up with standard definition full screen.

I highly recommend this camera. For the price, you simply cannot go wrong.

thanks for your advice. how's the image stability...the only really complaint i've read is no image stabiliazer so every little movement shows up.

When i use the camera, you really notice that there is no stabilizer (I have *very* shaky hands), but when the wife shoots, there's no problem at all. The only other thing I can think of regarding image stability is that if you quickly pan left to right in low-lighting, you'll lose some frames.

i ended up getting a samsung one since i had a $200 worth of gift cards. 2 questions:

1) how do i get the video to transfer from the mini dvd to my hard drive (should be easy but it will play the video but keeps saying it can't read the dvd after 5% is downloaded...it's clean and i finalized the mini dvd)

2) why doesn't video playback in 16:9 when I recorded it in 16:9

any help would be appreciated, i'm about to take it back and use the giftcards to buy beer.

anyone know how to play back my video that is shot in 16:9 to actually play back in 16:9 on my computer?

Vader AL said:

anyone know how to play back my video that is shot in 16:9 to actually play back in 16:9 on my computer?

Click to expand...

Sorry man, I don't know anything about the Samsung. With mine (the Aiptek hairlesswookie posted in the first post) plays in widescreen without me have to do anything fancy.

Are you sure you're shooting in widescreen? Is there a setting somewhere on the camera?