Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Camcorders ?

I'm needing some advice on which camcorder to get my 16 year old son for christmas. He wants to film deer and other people's hunts for personal enjoyment. The people at Circuit City showed me alot of cameras but they don't know squat about filming animals. What's out there for around $350 that I should be looking at? What format...MiniDV or MiniDVD? How much zoom?

Hey BigEars---Welcome. Make sure your teenager ain't funnin ya' and really wants to become famous on 'YOUTUBE". You can Google search camcorders and many of the sites will give you a pros/cons review. good luck. You're creating a monster,,,grin---Dang teenagers!!

I am no expert, but I would think the Mini DV format is probably more to your needs. The last I looked, the mini DVD cameras were about $500. Also, the resolution of the picture was less than a Mini DV and the discs are not reusable. I would expect your son will download the video to a PC and edit the footage anyway, then burn it on a DVD from there. It is very easy to download from Mini DV tape via firewire for editing with the right software. As for zoom, the more powerful the zoom, the more still you must hold the camera, so that has its drawbacks. (I would bet the hunter here from the 1000 yard Pennsylvannia club would be a good person to ask, as he posts his videos here).
When I bought my Mini DV last year I found a website (CNET or something like that) that rated all of the current models. I based my purchase on picture quality and resolution as all other features are usually the same (or close) for each camera.
Hope this helps...

Thanks Isaac, I'll check out the reviews. He's been asking for a camcorder for two years now so hopefully he's at least somewhat serious about it.

Try this site. You can compare one model at several stores.

http://www.shopzilla.com/

Here are some of the sites I used when researching camcorders a couple years ago. Consumer reports is good also. I bought a Cannon Optura 40, but that was a couple years ago so there are probably a lot better now.

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/
http://reviews.cnet.com/Camcorders/2001-6500_7-0.html?tag=ont.cam
http://www.epinions.com/Camcorders/_redir_att__~1
http://www.resellerratings.com/

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