Errrr does anyone know anything about handheld HD camcorders or have any recommendations for a good one to buy? Or any bad experiences?

I have some money from uni to buy one, mainly to make a film about ARRG.

My budget is £300 max.

Ideally I'd like:

Good low light performance [for filming inside sportshalls natch]
A 'hot shoe' [?!]//external mic input jack
Optical zoom and optical image stabilisation
Manual controls
Something than can film to SD cards for a reasonably long period of time without running out of battery and in a format that a baby monkey could use to edit on imovie/final cut/adobe pro

I've been looking at things like this:

Samsung H300 Full HD Camcorder (30x Optical zoom, 3inch touch LCD)

Canon LEGRIA HF R26 High Definition Camcorder - Silver (20x Optical Zoom, 3 inch Touchscreen LCD)

Some folk have mentioned using a DSLR instead but I'm not really sure my budget would allow for that and not sure how good they'd be for image stabilisation and also how long you can record for...

Basically any info that anyone has would be mega useful beacuse I've spent about 3 days reading reviews and googling things like CMOS, OND, CCD, lux rating and a load of other funny numbers and letters that i don't understand.

Hiya Faye,

Just spoke to my film maker buddy and he said it was fine to pass on his details. I bought him to a Qmu practice briefly once and he got a bit excited. He's a pro so feel free to ask him whatever.

His names Steve Braxton and his email is [email protected]

And his website is braxtonimage.com

Ox

XD

Xanadu that is ridiculously helpful thank you!

I like the idea of him getting over excited at practice!

I'm going to send him lots of probably annoying and ill-informed questions.

i have a really nice sont camcorder for sale... hmmmm

what is the *spec*? x x x x