How to Decide on a Professional High Def Camcorder

Do you want to buy a high definition camcorder? If that's the case, you really need to read this article. We will start by taking a look at the features of a high definition camcorder. We will then finish with a look at the main brands and their product ranges.

Main Features of a Professional High Def Digital Camcorder

Manual Aperture: having the ability to manually control your lens's aperture size is important. This gives you control over the amount of light that passes through the lens and into the camcorder, and therefore gives you control over how light or dark your image will be.
Manual Focus: auto focus has a tendency to cause the camera to drop in an out of focus depending on what objects come in and out of the scene. Manual focus gives you the ability to stay in control of which objects you are focusing on.
3 CCDs: a CCD is a chip in the camcorder that records the image as digital information. 3 CCD chips means better quality images.
White Balance: different scenes have a different balance of colors. E.g, the light inside your house has a yellow tint, but light from the sun is more towards the blue end. Manual white balance enables you to set it exactly how you want.
Sound Control: being able to manually control the sound recording volume is important, as some scenes will be louder or quiter than other scenes.
Headphone Jack: check that the camcorder has a headphone jack, because this will enable you to minotor the sound using headphones.
Filter Ring: check to see whether the camcorder has a screw ring around the lens. This will enable you to add various filters, for example a polarising filter or even just a UV filter to protect the lens from scratches.
Sound Inputs: all camcorders have their own micrphones built-in, but what if you want to connect your own microphone so that you can record audio from a specific person or object?
Auto Settings: although manual controls are an important part of any good professional camcorder, sometimes you will want to just let the automatic settings make the decisions for you, so a mixture of both automatic and manual functions is essential.
Lens Adapters or Removable Lens: although only the top-of-the-range camcorders allow you to change lenses, some camcorders are able to use lens adaptors to change the existing lens to telephoto, wide angle, etc.

Top Pro HD Digital Camcorder Manufacturers & Their Product Ranges

Professional camcorders are a very specific type of product, so there aren’t all that many brands out there, just a few who really specialise in make some really top quality camcorders.

Panasonic: $670-$6,000. A decent range of high-end high definition camcorders across a large price range.
Sony: $1,500-$5,200. As with Panasonic, a good range spread across a wide spectrum of prices.
Canon: $2,100-$10,000. A small number of very fine quality professional digital camcorders.
JVC: $3,500-$5,400. A few very high-quality professional digital camcorders.

Still not certain which camcorder to buy? Why not consider Professional Digital Camcorders which has reviews of all the major HD camcorders, such as the the HDR-FX1