Camcorder Reccomendations

[Fleetwood]

Morning all,

 

The current camcorder we have (Panasonic VDR-D310) is starting to show its signs of age (roughly 5+ years old now,) No HD recording, saves recordings to the 'miniDVD' disc & SD card feature doesn't work, completely menu driven so it takes ages to do any task with it, despite trying multiple AC chargers and batteries, the camera won't run off the battery and has to be plugged in if wanted to be used (pain in the rear if you're trying to record the kids on the stage from a reasonable distance)

 

Nothing's been asked of me to look for a new one (mainly because nobody knows what equipment we have, even we don't know half of what we've got! Stupid stockrooms!) but I figure it'd be worth having a look at a possible upgrade. I've seen a few that look 'alright' but I'm curious to see if anybody else can give some suggestions of ones they've got/what they think would be ideal? Ideally it needs to be tough casing (not some shiny/fancy state of the art one) and at a guess the budget would be between £100-£250... maybe £300 if it ticked the boxes. I wasn't here when they bought this camcorder so I have no idea what they paid for it, although I believe when it was new it was worth around £400.

 

Cheers!

[laserblazer]

What's it mainly used for?

[Fleetwood]

What's it mainly used for?

 

Mainly it's used for 'special' school assemblies and drama productions.

[laserblazer]

Then IMHO the microphone is as important as the camera (if not more so) and the integral microphones in camcorders all have one thing in common, they are terrible.. Take a look at this thread. I think the solution the OP found was really good.

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/av-multimedia-related/90791-video-camera.html