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I have been shopping for a while for a good digital camcorder. So I thought about how I was going to use one. Of course, I am looking for something portable, and easy to grab the family stuff. Also, something easy for vacations . . Easy to pack, easy to use, etc. Also, for those mountain bike trips that my buddies and I take . . I need something ultra-portable as well as durable. Then there is the format thing. What should it be? Mini DV? Well, the media is tape, but those are inexpensive, and can be re-used! What about MIni-DVD? Not a lot of space on those (about 30 minutes) What about hard drive based? Very nice, and compact camcorders, but when you put something on that hard disc, what are you going to do with it? Then, there are the flash based camcorders. They are cheap, but can you record anything of any quality that you will want to keep? \\r\\n
I admit that MIni DV formats were starting to win my deisicion making process as far as overall simplicity. And flash based ones certainly had my attention when it came to price and portability! But then I got to thinking about something else . . . . . . Once I had it recorded in the camcorder, what would I want to do with it? And everyone of those answers involved getting the recording to a computer! Whether it would be to create a DVD, or send things to the web. Then, I realized that most Mini DVD camcorders could also record video to an SD card. So whether I recorded to a Disc or to a card, getting it to the computer was going to be EASY! A hard disc or Mini DV would require cables and transfer times . . . Now I am still missing the portability of flash based camcorders, but I do get the ease of which to get this stuff to a computer. \\r\\n
So with my mind made up that Mini DVD was the format I should run with, now to pick out one. Doing a little online research, and setting myself a pricepoint of no more than $400, I started reading . . . . . Canon seemed to be a leader in this segment, with some nice units and some very intuitive menus. But one that kept catching my eye was a unit from Samsung that retailed at $350. I caught it on sale at Circuit City with a special where they threw in a cheap tri-pod and camera case. So I have played with it a little, and a bud grabbed it last night and filmed my band why we were on stage last night. Without a tri-pod, the video was a little shaky, but in the low light environment, I am very well pleased. There are several things I really like about this camcorder! There are a couple of gotchas however. Below are my observations. \\r\\n - Build Quality: Excellent! Anything with a moving part feels solid and tight! In my quest, I have held several of these over the last few days and JVC and Panisonic camcorders just felt cheap! Cheap plastic, and LCD\\'s that were hinged in such a way, that too much lateral force would probably mean "snap". Canon and Samsung on the other hand felt very solid and durable in my hands as I pushed buttons and and opened and closed LCD\\'s.
- Ease of use: So its DVD, so you should be able to plop in a disc, shoot some video, take the disc out and drop in your DVD player and it plays, right? Well, all of that is going to work, maybe . . . DVD - R/RW have to be formated when you first stick them in. And my Sony DVD - RW\\'s that I came home with never wanted to format. So I picked up some Sony DVD + RW\\'s and everything works as it should. The + RW\\'s also need to be formated, but I am talking seconds and not minutes to format these things. However, minuses also have to be processed before they will play in your computer/DVD player. Pluses don\\'t require this "processing" time. However, minuses give you the ability to edit your video and pluses don\\'t. My advice: If you don\\'t need to edit while in the camcorder, stick to the plus DVD\\'s. They are much "easier" to mess with.
- Controls: With no more than looking at the Quickguide, I dropped in a 2 gig SD card, switched the video to the card and started filming. Once I got the Plus RW\\'s, it was pretty much the same thing. The camcorder feels good in my hand, and controls such as the photo button, the 34X zoom feature, and even turning it on using the thumbwheel, all felt very natural.
- Menu Buttons: I admit: Most of the Canons seemed to have a little better menu layout. For example most of the inner menu functions on almost all other camcorders are on the camcorder behind the LCD Screen. So to access them, you have to with the LCD screen open, turn the camcorder toward you to select the buttons. The Samsung is this way! The Canons I looked at actually have these buttons on the bottom of the LCD screen. I did like this feature better. However, I didn\\'t like it $50 better and that was the difference in price between the Canon camcorder and the Samsung.
- Video Quality: This thing takes excellent video. And the LCD Screen is gorgous! Lets face it: Samsung is building some awesome LCD Televisions here lately, and one can only assume that the TV folks are talking to the Camcorder folks
- Overall: I am very satisfied with this camcorder. I haven\\'t taken any award winning videos with it as of yet, but what I like is that its ready to go in an instant (providing you have formated the discs ahead of time) and once I take the video, I can easily drop it into my laptop, into my DVD player, or even through a USB port on my computer. Or I can take the audio/video cables and hook it up direct to a Television. And those videos are of very nice "DVD" quality. I am still not sure why the Minus DVD\\'s didn\\'t work for me, and don\\'t know if that is a problem with the discs or the unit, but I am pretty sure its the discs. The manual mentions them too many times for the unit not to "support\\' that standard. Battery life has been reported pretty weak by several who have owned this device. I am pretty sure I will get 30-40 minutes of footage between charges. But I would say a new battery is certainly on my list of future accesories. I also like that this has what is called a quick menu. It has a light, but it doesn\\'t appear to be much of one . . . . And to access it, isn\\'t like pushing a button. Its more like pushing a button three times. The first time, you push it, you get a new setting in the camcorder to adjust for low light. The seond time you push it, you set a further setting for lowlight. And then the third time you push it, you get the second setting with the addition of a very dim light. This light is good enough to eluminate objects about 4 feet from you and everything else within the frame appears grainy. But outside shows are nice and clean, with very natural color. As I use this device more, look for more updates, good and bad! I have yet to take a still shot with it. I am not planning to . . . I have my Canon S-3 for the stills. And to be honest, the Canon has served as a decent MPEG video recorder to this point. The band has several shows coming up in the next few weeks and I am hoping to give some hard real world tests, so stay tuned . .
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