Camcorder to buy - 1 chip, 3 chip, HD, None of the above

One chip cameras are great in daylight and bright light. Today's one chip is as good as a three chip from several years ago.

Example: Sometimes I use a Sony TRV-27 (No longer made). The camera is small and unobtrusive. I shot a daytime beach wedding with it and the footage looks amazing. The reception, however, was indoors at a dark restaurant. I had to use nightvision because the camera's low-light capabilities were so poor. Ugh!

I swear by my 3 chip Sony VX-2000. Great under all conditions. But another 3 chip I use, now almost 7 years old, the TRV-900 looks almost as bad as the TRV-27 in lowlight conditions.

Of course, something as simple as a 4-Watt light could improve things, but you get the general idea.

3ccd vs one is no comparison 3ccd all the way but cost. Depending on what you want to use it for most 3ccd are more clumsier and work best with a tripod for best results.

You will notice a huge jump from analog to DV so why wait. Most big chain outlets have a Sony Dv with ilink for under $600 or you can double that for HiDef single ccd. Search the web for side by side comparisons, quality and reliability.

Dump Analog

It all depends on (a) what you want to spend, and (b) whether you really can see and/or appreciate the better quality which you get with the best of today's camcorders ..and if the rest of your audience can.

Analogue camcorders were perfectly OK when there were only analogue camcorders. And now you can edit their footage digitally - and flawlessly - with iMovie, instead of ruining the picture by copying tape to tape, as people did in the seventies and eighties.

3-CCD cams do give a better picture ..smoo-oother colour, less "grainy" pictures in dim light.. than 1-CCD cameras. But if you're shooting mainly outdoors in bright light you probably wouldn't see any difference at all. On the other hand, if you're shooting children's school plays indoors; weddings in dim churches; exotic mosques, temples and glow-worm caves on your holidays, or inside museums and galleries, then the better quality pictures from a 3-CCD camera would be apparent. But that may not be important to you. You may be perfectly happy with slightly 'grainy', dark pictures, if they catch the 'ambience', or feel of the place, nevertheless.

Essentially, you wouldn't know what you were missing - if anything - unless you did side-by-side comparisons ..and no-one's going to shoot their holidays on two different camcorders simultaneously, just to compare results! [..Are they?..]

For most home videos, 1-chip cameras are perfectly good enough! And if your TV's rather old, the imperfect picture on an older tube may not reveal any difference between 1-chip and 3-chip anyway. The only way you could tell, to your own satisfaction, is to spend some time (..make it two or three hours..) in a big electronics store, trying several different camcorders.

What's important to me is that a camera has manual controls as well as automatic settings, so that I can manually set the shutter speed, white balance, audio, and I can add an extra wide-angle lens to the front ..and a proper microphone.. so that I can shoot what I want to shoot ..not just what the camera wants to give me. So I'll want the widest possible view (..for shooting indoors..) with the best possible sound, and the best light I can gather. But if you just want "snapshot" home movies, why bother with all that?

Save your money till hi-def becomes mainstream? ..Sounds reasonabubble.

[..P.S: Here's one I shot earlier - about 11 Christmases ago - with an analogue JVC-SZ1 (S-VHS-C) camcorder. I didn't 'edit' it, as I knew that would ruin the quality ..so this is just how I shot it (..I added the music later, in the camcorder). The camera was on automatic most of the time (..so that everyone could shoot a bit, without needing to twiddle knobs), so the white balance goes wrong - some shots look blue - and some bits are too dark. But if you're happy with this kind of thing (.. it still looks OK to me, and it's fun, and entertaining..) then why bother changing?

..Unless you're thinking of making movies for someone else, who may be paying for them. Or unless you really want to make great movies which don't keep going from bright to dim, then back to bright and then dim, as you move from outdoors to indoors, etc.

Try a few different camcorders yourself, and see what suits you.]

Taking a step back,

If you are using the camera for family only, you cannot go wrong with a 1ccd camera(the right one). I was just saying a analog camera with under 400 lines of resolution awhile most DV are around 500. Not including the size of the ccd for total res. Plus there are many cameras out there that will replay both 8mm analog and 8 digital like the sony trv310 which many say has better resolution then many DV cameras and better low light performance. Just stay away from those mini DVD cameras if you want to edit later.