Recommendations for best HD camcorder for educationl use

[Geoffrey Cox]

Hi All,

I work in an educational establishment and am looking to buy some HD camcorders for student use. I own a Canon XH-A1 and Sony HDR-HC3 but am a bit out of touch with the latest consumer camcorder models. Would prefer a tape based system (though not essential) as it's easiest for students to keep their footage and ideally would like a mic inputs as sound is very important - the courses are more music / sound based than video in fact so another priority is ease of use. As is robustness as they are likely to take a bit of abuse!

So if anyone could name their favourite bit of kit I'd be grateful (budget needs to be around the £200-400 range).

Geoff

[Guy McLoughlin]

The Canon FS200 Flash Memory Camcorder is a good choice.

- It's easy to use
- 37x optical zoom
- Has microphone and headphone inputs
- Has manual control over most settings
- Great image quality for a SD video camera
- Uses standard SDHC cards for recording
( solid-state has no moving parts and will last longer )
- It's in your price range, roughly £300 in the UK

The only real drawback is that the lens does not have a filter thread, thus mounting a wide-angle adapter will be more difficult.

[Mel Enriquez]

Originally Posted by Guy McLoughlin

The Canon FS200 Flash Memory Camcorder is a good choice.

- It's easy to use
- 37x optical zoom
- Has microphone and headphone inputs
- Has manual control over most settings
- Great image quality for a SD video camera
- Uses standard SDHC cards for recording
( solid-state has no moving parts and will last longer )
- It's in your price range, roughly £300 in the UK

Geoffrey,

The only real drawback is that the lens does not have a filter thread, thus mounting a wide-angle adapter will be more difficult.

I agree with this. Most Canon's now have these featureset (except maybe those Z models). If you want something better, you can opt for the HF or HV series (going HD). There are still some sub U$500 models. They are all easy to use and basically good for what the OP wants to do.

If you want tape, if you can still find them, there's the HV-20, HV-30, and HV-40. Personally, using sdhc cards is easier and more convenient for me. That is the future.

You have to love most Canon models now-adays as they sport the mic imput and even audio out. For mic, you can always pick up a U$150 or less Rode videomic. Good sound without costing too much.

[Geoffrey Cox]

Thanks for the advice - I'll look into the HF / HV series as I do want HD.

[Gary Nattrass]

Hi I have the canon HF11 and it is superb, as said it is SD card and internal memory so the import for edit is very quick and good. It also has good manual and interfacing for mics etc and it does up to full 1920x1080i 25p 24mbs HD. Also look at the HF100 as this is just card with no internal memory and you can select different bit rates to optimise storage per project.

I am doing some work with a community college for yr7 up and the HF11 is what we will be using for most of the shooting. OK tape is covered by the HV20/30 but I think you will find it just as easy for students to get their own 4gb memory cards and just use DVD as a cheap archive storage device.

The HF11 also has an EASY button to get started with and it sets everything for quick shooting.