Quantcast

camcorders - help me scour the low end of the market

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,405
7,793
so i want a camcorder. it'll be used for general mucking around, but its main purpose will be for in-car video of my RX-8 at autocross and track events.

things i want:

- CHEAP, probably used off of ebay if practical
- rudimentary manual controls for shutter priority, exposure, etc.
- good resolution (so the largest sensor within reason), AF that isn't all too horrible, capability for manual WB
- electronic image stabilization (not optical!), as the high frequency vibrations of cars with stiff suspensions make optical stabilizers go loony
- accepts screw on filters, wide angle adapters
- DV format, probably miniDV
- no DVD recording, MPEG4 encoding or other non-standard garbage: it must play nicely with my mac and apple sw (final cut express, namely)
- ideally will have an underwater housing available that's not an exorbitant price: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/shop/1932/Housings_Accessories_Housings.html

after poking around a bit on www.camcorderinfo.com it seems that i'd best be looking at something like the Canon Elura 100 or Elura 90 (both a year or two out of date). admittedly i only looked over the canon lineup, as the sheer number of models is quite overwhelming. :x i'm used to the simplicity of my 20D + bag of primes, after all...

any thoughts? what has worked for you?