Small Digital Cameras

How to spend your money wisely when buying your first Pocket HD camcorder

How to buy a  high def camcorders that does everything you want without falling foul of corruptible sales staff or decetive  advertisement

Decide what you want

When it comes to expensive HD Camcorders that can do anything and money was not a problem. This in turn would mean you would never buy a wrong HD camcorder The fact is, most expensive models can do anything that the cheaper ones can, and while you might occasionally find that your big professional camera was too heavy for your holiday packing or had an pain in the ass SxS socket when all you wanted was a elementary LJSB port for the most part it would have all the tools you wanted and would take good quality footage.

For most of us, however, every penny counts, and buying the right pocket hd camcorders becomes a question of working out how much you can spend and what features you want, then trying to find a camcorder that matches both requirements. So, first things first figure out how much you’ve got to spend and stick to it. Ifs hugely annoying to leave a shop and realise that you could actually have spent a little more on a better camera, and it’s even worse to come out of a shop resenting the fact that you’ve spent far more on a camera than you needed to. Do your sums before you get your wallet out.

Next consider what you want to use the camcorder for and what you’ll do with the footage. The enormous rise in the popularity ot hard disk drive camcorders came about because a large number of camcorder users realised that they seldom edited their tapes or burnt footage to DVD: instead, they just plugged the camera into a TV and played back the footage, meaning that a high capacity HDD and an HDMI socket made more sense than removable tapes and a Firewire cable.

Buyer Beware

Honest sales staffs are a blessing, but watch out for the crafy ones

The vast majority of sales staff we’ve encountered over the years have been honest helpful and keen to sell the affordable hd camcorders rather than the most expensive, which is why it’s always a good idea to talk to the sales staff rather than just making a decision alone. It still pays to be on your precaution against the occasional ill-informed or unscrupulous member of sales staff. We’ve encountered plenty of pitchmen who love big numbers a little too much, extolling the virtues of an 80x digital zoom and ignoring a 12x optical, or waffling on about how a camera has three million pixels rather than 3-megapixelsl Worse still was the chap in a high street chain who claimed that a particular camcorder was very well appropriate to the particular type of light’ that we’d get on our holidays. Make use of the 99% of sales staff that are genuinely there to help, but also you must remember that all staff work on a percentage on what they sell , so they will try sell you the most exspensive camcoder

The Grey Market.

sometimes a deal can be too good to be true while black market goods are commonly illegal in themselves, grey market goods are technically legal and usually work perfectly well, but still not recommend them.

A Grey Market item is an item that is imported directly from another country that by-passes the manufacturer’s authorized distributors in that country. This tax premium didn’t apply in other PAL countries, and it fast became apparent that it you wanted a two way camcorder, say to record footage back to tape after you’d edited it on a PC then the cheapest way too get one was a grey import . By the time the rise of DVD drivers put an end to the demand for two way camcorders, the number of grey market camcorders dealers was already huge.

Buying a grey import comes with major risks –   is that the manufacturers warranty will be void .

  Since the manufacturer’s authorized distributor and resellers are bypassed, they don’t get paid. You buy the item for less because of this. The downside is that the people not getting paid are the people that would have differently been there for your backing, service and warranty.  If they don’t get paid, they will not honor your warranty and sometimes simply not service or support you at all.

Eitherreason alone is enough to make a grey import a bad idea, so stick to reputable online dealers that have received verifiably good customer reviews.

Try Before You Buy.

There are two reasons why you should always try a camcorder before you buy. Like many thing in life not everything suits everyone, this is the same with camcorders Someone with short arms may find a shoulder mounted camcorder quickly puts a strain on their elbow. Big impressive lenses are practically heavy and make a camcorder too front- heavy for anyone who lacks muscle. If you’ve got the long lean fingers a pianist you might find that cramped confines of a pistol cam’s control panel don’t suit you, while someone with the stocky fingers of a drummer might have difficulty with the widely spaced controls of a horizontal camcorder. The second reason to try before you buy is much less likely to trip you up, hut can still occur. Occasionally, quality control can fail at even the best of manufacturers. Naming no names, but there have been times when we’ve come into possession of camcorders that shouldn’t have made it off the production line, and if possible , borrow a camcorder from a friend and try it out before buying, alough this might not be possible it is the best way find the wright camcorder for you

Headroom

Find a high def camcorders that will grow with you

Finally, there’s headroom. Professional videographers use the term headroom to refer to having quality to spare-shooting in HD for a proj that will end up in SD so as to ensure the highest eventual quality, for example. That sort of headroom is worth considering when buying a camcorder, but so are other kinds, you might think that you’re only go to shoot a few videos of the kid’s on holiday on MiniDV, but what you later wish you’d shot in HD so you could send them to your Aunt Florrie on Blue-ray? More significantly, just because something is unfamiliar doesn’t necessarily mean its more complex: tape possibly familiar, but you try doing anything with a Hi8 camcorder compared to an HOD ma and you’ll soon see how much ease of use has become a priority for manufacturers these days

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