Help me find a good sub—$200 simple HD video camera
November 11, 2010 11:24 AM   Subscribe

Help me find a good sub—$200 simple HD video camera

I'm not asking for Blu-Ray quality here, but I want something scrappy and durable to make shiny sharp nice videos of our fun times.
I want something with a reasonable vector of quality to battery life to storage to optical zoom (that one is important) to low light shooting ability as I would like this to be a good cam for music festival gooferies.

Ive seen some promising things from Flip cams and the Sony Bloggie but this really isn't my beat so any help would be really appreciated.

Thanks!
posted by Senor Cardgage to Technology (9 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
I love my HD Flip cam, but the zoom is terrible. It's not great in low light, either. If these are important to you then a Flip probably won't work.

It does very well in normal light, 2GB of storage space has always been enough for me and the battery life is excellent.
posted by geekchic at 11:42 AM on November 11, 2010


I have a Flip UltraHD, it's very easy to use and pretty durable, has an optical zoom (kind of crappy though), holds a charge for quite a while and also runs off of AA batteries so you can keep it going as long as you'd like if you carry around a couple of rechargeable batteries. I haven't done too much with it in lowlight situations; you could probably find some samples online. The biggest issue I have with it is that it's pretty shaky and can get some noticeable optical wobbles if it's not clamped down...apparently the new ones have some sort of digital image stabilization built in so they could have addressed those issues. This could be important, especially if you are using the zoom a lot (I don't).

If you are also in the market for a point and shoot camera, most of them these days come with HD video capabilities (720p, same as the Flip)...I've had great experiences with Canon's PowerShot series. Might be a bit more than $200 (probably $250 or $300), but it would be two devices than one. You can put a 16gig card in one of those and double the storage of the highest capacity Flip. You'd have lower battery life, most likely, but a better zoom and lowlight capability. Probably not as durable (or at least not something you'll feel like flinging around, I have done some pretty silly things with the Flip).
posted by soy bean at 11:48 AM on November 11, 2010


The gopro is about $60 over your price range but I've heard nothing but good things about it. It was the first camera that came to mind when I read you were looking for "scrappy and durable".
posted by cazoo at 12:47 PM on November 11, 2010


Oops, I missed the part about optical zoom.
posted by cazoo at 12:50 PM on November 11, 2010


A former coworker of mine had this, and thought it was pretty good:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001GXR03U/

I used it for < 1 minute, and was like "for $150, that seems good". Then I didn't buy one because I still don't really need a video camera.
posted by Phredward at 1:40 PM on November 11, 2010


Pretty much all video cameras are going to have crap sound. I've been looking into replacing my flip and doing something a bit more sophisticated. Since you mentioned music you should look into a zoom audio recorder. You can do audio passthrough or synch up later, but regardless of what camera you get this will help with the sound issues.

I plan to replace my camera soon (I have the first gen flip). I am thinking of getting the ultra or a iPod Touch, but I think the Cannon mentioned above is a great way to go as well.
posted by cjorgensen at 2:14 PM on November 11, 2010


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16830180295&cm_re=panasonic-_-30-180-295-_-Product

This is a point and shoot camera that does 720p video recording. Its a panasonic and only $139 . has 8x optical zoom
posted by majortom1981 at 3:16 PM on November 11, 2010


Zoom also make a camcorder with their microphone technology (which really is quite good). It's $300, and has no optical zoom though. I don't think the product that you want exists at the price point that you want it to.
posted by schmod at 3:20 PM on November 11, 2010


None of these cheap video recorders will have good optical zoom or very good microphones.

You may want to consider getting a point and shoot that also does HD video. The sound still won't be good, but you will get optical zoom. Like majortom1981 says...
posted by reddot at 6:40 PM on November 11, 2010


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