Jacobs Digital | Camcorders

Camcorders shooting High Definition (HD) movies straight to removable memory card, integral hard drive – or both – have arrived to help you make the most of your High Definition TV, providing the ability to hook them up direct for replaying 16:9 ratio widescreen format recordings, or download footage to your PC for sharing over the Internet.

With High Definition and 3D technology on everyone’s lips, the latest generation camcorders have risen to the challenge, whilst offering smaller form factors and better value than ever.

The choice these days is between camcorders that shoot to removable media card or large capacity internal hard drive, though many devices ease the decision process by offering both.

This in turn has led to camcorders getting physically smaller. ‘Pocket cams’ such as the Sony ‘Bloggies’ and Flip Video range are not much larger than a mobile phone.

Whilst such relatively inexpensive options don’t offer the quality nor feature set of pricier models with bigger lenses and optical zoom capability, convenient features such as an integral USB ‘arm’ for attaching to your PC and re-charging the battery at the same time have seen pocket cams popularity soar.

Things to consider when buying a camcorder include whether, if High Def shooting is offered, this is at the Full HD 1920x1080 pixels, approximately four times the number of pixels in standard definition TV broadcasts, or the slightly lower 1280x720. The higher the resolution the sharper the image, but pay attention too to the number of frames per second (fps) quoted. The higher the number, the smoother and more life-like the footage when replayed.

You might want to go further and shoot not only in HD but also 3D to generate content for that new 3D TV purchase. Such devices are still in their infancy, though Panasonic has a world first offering.

Of course, shooting in HD or 3D means increased data so it’s sensible to invest in a couple of additional higher capacity cards.