Since Kelli and I are going to be parents soon we thought that it was high time to go ahead and purchase a video camera. After all, there are many “memories” to catch and preserve. I didn’t want to spend too much, naturally, since the technology is always changing but I did want to make sure we at least got a “full” HD camera.
There was two front runners in which I was interested; The Toshiba Camileo X100 HD and the JVC Everio GZHM300. They were both in the price range I was comfortable with but they definitely had problems that I wasn’t comfortable with. Apparently, the Toshiba modem is so cheap that you can’t even turn off the button sounds! Also, the Toshiba model was so concerned with “ease of use” that it was extremely limited in any manual settings. Both were said to have substantial issues with the auto-focus working quickly and correctly.
I definitely wasn’t for any of the Sony camcorders.. I just don’t like Sony too much and all of their cameras in the price range were “pseudo” HD, 720 pixels. So, fortunately, I came across a slightly older (and cheaper) Canon VIXIA HF-R100. This is very similar to the HF-R10 model except that it has no on-board memory for video storage. That’s fine with me because I don’t plan to use that memory anyway, so why pay for it? It’s a slightly older model but it has full HD and is a solid camera all around. Best Buy advertised it online for $249.00 and even said that they had a few at my local store. The weird thing was that when I got to the store, they didn’t have it on display! I had to ask around and they pulled it out of one of the cabinets. Why this is, I can only speculate. Are they trying to only push the newest and most expensive models?
Anyway, I was able to pick it up and play around with it yesterday. So far it seems pretty solid. I was a little nervous about the quality of the picture but I don’t think I will be able to make a true judgement until I hook the camera up to my TV with an HDMI cable (so far I was only able to hook it up using component cables).
So, here’s a little video Kelli and I filmed last night. Of course the quality is degraded for YouTube viewing.
Filed under: 1: Life, 3: Pursuit of Happiness Tagged: | Family, Pregancy, Videos
