Question on Videocams:

I heard that some electronics are cheaper than Singapore. Been thinking of getting a small videocam for myself, but not sure which one to get. Hope you could give me some handy advice...

Well, a basic one will do, but I'm particular about picture quality and whether images can be transferred quickly and conveniently. Any suggestions?

Submitted by Reader

Answer:

Which is more important to you? Video or stills? It's ideal to derive more mileage out of your new purchase, so your new gadget should be geared toward what you do most.

If you want your content to be easily transferrable and can be viewed immediately after shooting, you should be looking at a camcorder that uses either flash memory, a hard drive or DVD media. Of course, there're downsides to each. DVD means you can only play back the video on a DVD player. Hard drive camcorders require a memory buffer since there are moving parts within and flash memory capacities are still more expensive per megabyte compared to hard drives.

Check out the list of smaller DVD camcorders here.

For smaller flash memory camcorders, you can consider the Panasonic SDR-100 and the Sanyo Xacti HD1.

One last thing, a proper video camera is heavy (compared with a digital camera). So is portability important to you as well? If it is, perhaps you ought to stick with a digicam that's capable of video as well, unless you intend to shoot more videos than pictures.