I've got a Canon MV890 and it's great. Holds a mini DV tape, records in true wide screen (no cropping or stretching). I get the 1 hour tapes (not long play) that cost about £3 a pop. Image quality is great blah blah blah...
Now I'm sure if you want to do anything serious this will be a heap of crap, however, for most people I'm sure it's more than adequate.
On top of that it comes bundled with pinnacle software.
You plug it into the computer via firewire and it transfers from tape to hard disk in real time so an hour tape takes an hour to transfer, which is a bit annoying, but hey... it's very cheap.
It's not High Def, but it is DVD res... So to be honest, it's pretty good.
The battery lasts for 2-3 hours, you can get additional ones too, and they're tiny, frankly I'm stunned they last as long as they do!
http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/pl/8-567864/Camcorders/Canon-MV890-Compare-Prices
Personally I like removable media, the hard disk recording cameras (although I've had no experience of them, don't own one etc etc) from what the Gadget show say aren't quite as good as they should be yet, and they still opt for tape based cameras. The upside of the hard disk ones is the transfer rate of the files is fantastic.
Now I'm sure if you want to do anything serious this will be a heap of crap, however, for most people I'm sure it's more than adequate.
On top of that it comes bundled with pinnacle software.
You plug it into the computer via firewire and it transfers from tape to hard disk in real time so an hour tape takes an hour to transfer, which is a bit annoying, but hey... it's very cheap.
It's not High Def, but it is DVD res... So to be honest, it's pretty good.
The battery lasts for 2-3 hours, you can get additional ones too, and they're tiny, frankly I'm stunned they last as long as they do!
http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/pl/8-567864/Camcorders/Canon-MV890-Compare-Prices
Personally I like removable media, the hard disk recording cameras (although I've had no experience of them, don't own one etc etc) from what the Gadget show say aren't quite as good as they should be yet, and they still opt for tape based cameras. The upside of the hard disk ones is the transfer rate of the files is fantastic.