[yama1408]

Was looking around to buy a Digital Camcorder.
almost got sold on High Definition Camcorders , the recommended one seems to be SONY HDR HC3
Hardly an impulse buy , ( 10K HKD!) , I m getting swayed by the reviews and the prospect of being on leading edge for a few months :-)
I am not a professional videographer, with no pretensions of expertise in this field.

Opinions anyone?everyone? anybody bought or used this?

[JohanSWE]

Do you have a HD compatible tv set? or are you planing to get one soon?
If not HD cam is a bit overkill i would say, especially as you claim your not a pro.
Go for a mid range DV cam instead, you should be able to get a nice one for 3-4K as a starter cam, and when you learn to record without people thinking you where trying to capture an earthquake on cam..then you can start thinking about HD cam corders :P
i remember my first recordings.... aka... "the alzheimer files"

[KnowItAll]

One of my writers who is a film producer wrote this review for us.

http://www.devlib.org/articles/gadge...ders-compared/

[penguinsix]

I've got the HC-3 and it is pretty cool. I bought it for a newborn baby that just arrived and figured it would be best to capture his first days in HD rather than traditional formats. In 10 years, everything will be HD in most of the world so figured it was worth it.

I paid $1200 in the US at a Best Buy (impulse buy kind of thing--I didn't shop around much, but it is a pretty good price from what I've seen.

I run it via firewire directly into my Macs and copy everything to my HD and burn to DVDs.

Has a lot of features. I've read the professionals might not like some of them, but the consumers will be pretty happy.

I'm pretty happy with it, but it is my first camcorder.

[penguinsix]

By the way, the HC3 and pretty much all HD camcorders out there are 1080i, which is sort of the 'half-man's step' to HDTV pending the arrival of 1080p. i means interlaced and p means progressive.

p is better, of course, but is not fully implemented. HD 1080i flat screens are nearing $1000 whereas their 1080p counterparts are twice that.

1080p camcorders are still in the professional price range.

Read here for more on the difference:

http://www.audioholics.com/news/edit...ideoformat.php