Life changed when I got an HD camcorder. It wasn’t too long ago that I was capturing video of my young son on a crappy analog camcorder. Okay, it wasn’t as crappy as that camcorder on the left. But, when you had an analog, low resolution camcorder, you didn’t really notice because you didn’t have anything better. That all changed when digital camcorders burst on the scene.
Suddenly, importing video onto a computer and editing it became a breeze. Wow, I remember using a dazzle video converter to move it to digital. That process took me forever – even on a super beefy Inspiron laptop. Now that I think about it, that Inspiron looked like a cinder block itself. Unreal. Not only that, but the video quality really picked up.
Now, look at that beauty. Yep, that’s a newer Panasonic HD Camcorder – the HDC-SD5. You’ll be amazed to know that by newer, I mean like 2007 – $1,000! Not only has the video improved drastically (1920×1080), but the ergonomics are better, and the size is ridiculously small. They only keep getting better and smaller.
So, what really is the big deal about a HD camcorder? Well, the resolutions are sick. The data transfer rates are so much better these days. The low light processing is much better than it used to be, thanks to the improved digital processors. And, as I stated above, the sizes keep getting smaller.
In any case, there are things to look for when you are in the hunt for an HD camcorder. We’ll take a look for that in the near future here.