Me and my buddy have become more interested in making short films as a hobby, so we took what little money we had and purchased a HV10 as it was the cheapest HD camcorder we could afford. We bought it knowing there was no external mic shoe or inputs or anything, basically came into the HDV world from SD knowing nothing.

My two questions are fairly simple.

What would be a good cost effective alternative around the no external audio recording?

And what would be the best way to get the most out of our camera?

Any suggestions and help would be awesome!

Hi Brian!

[...] What would be a good cost effective alternative around the no external audio recording?

And what would be the best way to get the most out of our camera? [...]

You should have asked these questions before buying a HV10. ;-)

If you have the possibility to send the HV10 back, you should do so and go for a HV20 instead. The internal audio of the HV10 is pretty much horrible, at least in quiet environments - as it provides no mic input, you need to get a external recording device, like a MiniDisk recorder plus a microphone or a external audio recorder, like the Zoom H2. A HV20 + a good mic will be cheaper than a HV10 + a external recording device. For a beginner it is also not too easy to get the sound of the external recorder in sync with the vid.

The other big thing that is much better about the HV20 is the handling of low light conditions.

Cheers, Oliver

I wish there was a way to exchange it, however it's just not a possibility. I will look into the Zoom H2. Thanks for the recommendation though.