Okay folks,

I'm after a camcorder - I've had a look at a couple of the camcorder mags and the Panasonic and Sony ones seem to come out well. Think it was the TRV27? that I quite fancied.

I'd like to spend around £400~500 on it.

What are the recommendations of the ScoobyNet techies? ;) I don't need one dripping with extra features, just a good quality number that's going to last without becoming instantly obsolete :)

Also, are there any decent camcorder websites that I can have a swatch at?

Thanking you kindly :)

Bought the Sony one for my father for his birthday. Is a digi 8mm format. I didnt want to spend lots on a fully digi cam and was concerned about obselecence.

I am really impressed with the features and picture and sound quality. Its ability to adjust to lighting even in poor conditions is amazing compared with cameras of a few years ago. Sound quality is similarly good. It hardly picks up any background noises only what you are pointing the camera at.

.........recommend Sony.........

I bought a Canon MV400 a couple of months ago for about £480 from empiredirect.co.uk. So far I'm well impressed with it, it's small enough to carry about and has decent picture quality. It's mini DV (digital) btw. Empire Direct are ok as far as service, the camera turned up the following day but the tapes took 3 weeks (and a lot of chasing) to arrive. When they did arrive I got twice as many as I paid for (shhhh, don't tell em ;) )

Richard

I also got bought the Sony digi 8mm for Xmas and it is great...

:)

I wanted to run tapes rather than digital only as I wanted my filming to be kept on a shelf and watchable anytime rather then only on the PC etc... there were some camera's starting to do digital and tape.. so you could do either. They might be cheap enough now?

Mine cost around what you are looking at spending which was a package including a tripod and carry case etc... from Dixons I believe..

So another vote for Sony.