recommend a camcorder.

Ishindar

Im looking to buy a camcorder in the 300-600e range. any recommendations on what i should get, why and where?

kpobrien

You would be better to go for a High Definition camcorder.
Everything is goint that way nowadays.

Sony HDRUX3E looks a bargain for £499 at Jessop's of Newry

Banjo

I'm also looking for recommendations, although I'm more in the €200-€400 bracket myself (preferably MiniDV).

Might be an idea to let people know what you intend to do with the camera so they can give a more informed recommendation. Just want to point-and-shoot to capture the kids' first steps or your mates pished out of their heads singing Celine Dion? Looking to make your first steps into actual film-making? Have a date with Paris Hilton and don't want to waste the opportunity? How urgently do you need to buy it, and do you prefer internet or bricks n' mortar? What you want the camera for will make a big difference to what you need to buy.

Not sure if this is any good to you but I've been doing a bit of reading up. This info may not be accurate and may not be any use to you at all. Still...from what I can gather, you've got 4 major formats :
DVD - Cheap media, you can take the film straight out of the camera and stick it in your DVD player to watch it. Because it's a DVD you can jump into the footage at pretty much any point you want when you're reviewing the footage. However, not easy to edit since the footage is usually MPEG2 encoded. Also, the video quality is not as high as MiniDV as far as I can tell and you need to carry a lot of spare discs around since you can only get about 20 mins onto the mini-DVDs. I've seen a fair few reviews complaining that DVD camera mics pick up the sound of the disc spinning when recording.

MiniDV Tapes - It's a mature format so both the cameras and media are cheap and easy to get. The DV codec is pretty much universal so if you intend to edit your footage this is the biz, it's recognised natively by all the major editing suites. DV is considered broadcast-quality, so picture quality should be better than the same camera encoding to DVD. 1 tape is about 60 mins footage. That said, It's a linear format so you can't jump back and forth as you like. Editing will require a firewire port on your PC most of the time (and the cable is rarely supplied on low-end cameras). Also, it's on the way out, most manufacturers are moving to DVD, HCSD and HDD - this appears to have resulted in a loss of features on the high-end MiniDV cameras. Tapes can make a bit of noise during use which may or may not get picked up by the camera mic, depending on the camera really.

Hard Drive - MPEG2 encoding again, I think, so not the best for editing but there's no messing around with tapes or discs, you just shoot till the box is full (fnaaar!). That said, for long projects or holidays, you'll want your laptop along to dump the footage on to 'cause you can't change the hard drive when it gets full.

High Capacity SD - No moving parts (in the storage medium) and the tiny form-factor of the cards means you get some pretty small cameras. The media are more expensive than tapes or discs though, so you're not going to be carrying around a tonne of storage at any given time. I'm not interested in them myself so have done very little looking in to it, not sure what the recording format is or what kind of quality you can expect.

There are also 4 major manufacturers : Sony, JVC, Panasonic and Canon. Sony seem to sell their cameras as loss leaders, so you get a lot of bang for your buck, but the emphasis is on ease of use rather than flexibility. Also, you can only use Sony batteries in the camera and they can set you back literally hundreds of quid - the high capacity battery for some of the cameras costs half as much as the camera it powers! A lot of the new models have touch screen LCDs for navigating menus which personally I don't like the sound of. I have greasy fingers.... Panasonics seem to have the best handling of the lot, the interface on the cameras I've looked at is well layed out and the positioning of the buttons and joystick is perfect for one handed operation. Picture quality is a bit grainy though, in general. Canon picture quality and colour reproduction is, apparently, fantastic, but some of the design decisions are a bit odd - the tape compartment on the MD160 is on the bottom, so you can't change tape if it;s on a tripod. Haven't seen much for or against JVC. They're nice n' cheap though!

Other than that, the stuff to look out for :
CCD - on the low-end consumer cameras you're looking at a 1/5" or 1/6" CCD. In general, the lower the number under the line, the better the picture quality is likely to be, although take the resolution of the camera into account - the more pixels they squeeze onto a CCD the more likely it is that your picture will have noise-induced grainyness.

Mic - It's not much of an issue from the models I've looked at but a top mounted mic tends to pick up more noise from the camera holder than a front mounted one. Look for a mic input, since a dedicated external mic will normally give better quality audio than the built in one
Optical Zoom - Ignore digital zoom. It's pointless.

Image Stabilisation - The closer you can zoom in, the more noticeable the camera shake will be. Look for OIS (Optical image stabilisation) over EIS (electronic) as it compensates for shake before the video hits the CCD rather than editing the shake out of the image after it's been captured, which can result in a loss of overall picture size. Still, EIS is better than no IS at all.

Peripherals - most of the cameras come with no or only rudimentary software for editing. Most do not come with Firewire cables. Most come with bog-standard batteries that will only last an hour or so. Most do not come with (or have no option of) a seperate battery charger so you need to plug the camera in to charge the batteries. Carry cases don't come as standard. Hell, a lot of them don't even come with a blank tape or disc! Make sure whatever you're buying that you pick up the stuff that's not going to be in the box, so when your camera arrives you can use it as more than just a very attractive door-stop.

HD vs SD - HD cameras cost more. The picture quality is higher, sure, but depending on what you want it for it may not be worth the premium. Also, bear in mind that the improved quality means that you'll eat up storage space faster, it's especially important to take that into account when buying a HDD-based camera. Personally, I don't have a HD ready TV so I'm not going to see the benefit. I'm going to wait until the technology becomes cheaper.

As I said, this is all a fairly uninformed opinion built from reading lots of reviews rather than actual experience or understanding - hopefully someone who knows what they're talking about will be along in a minute to correct it! Also, I can't recommend any cameras cause I've not got one myself. I'm torn between the Canon MD160 (which appears to have issues in low light and has no mic input), the Panasonic GS60 (which doesn't handle low light well either and has poorer colour reproduction but is 100 quid cheaper and seems better designed) and giving up my vendetta against Sony. Both those cameras are at the bottom end of your budget so might not suit. 300-600 will get you a high-end MiniDV/DVD or a low-to-mid range Hard Drive. Sorry I can't be more help.

ejmaztec

For low-light performance, it looks like Sony is the one to go for, in whichever format. My old Canon MV650i low-light performance is rubbish compared with an assortment of Sony models.

This is a handy site

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/

Ishindar

nice info thks guys

twenty8

I recently got the Panasonic NV GS320. It is a mini dv. I love it. Just use it for family events - around the house etc. Was great for christmas and comes with some basic editing software.

Great fun. My films will never be shown on BBC - but good enough for me.
The cost was about 420.