kamikaze145

I am going to buy a camcorder. I would like to keep it under $300. I would like one with some decent features, good quality, and either a DVD one or one that you hook up to your computer like a flash drive or whatever. I need some suggestions/help because I have no idea about these things. Thanks.

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depend on what you plan on using it for

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kamikaze145

mostly for recording fights, sparring, wrestling matches, etc...

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is this for archiving? ie. for posterity.
or just for review and delete?

The reason I ask is because Im wondering if its just for 'short term hobby use' Versus 'long term heirloom archives'.

If its the former, 300 bucks is a fair number.

For your uses, convenience & 'ease of use' is priority... so I would go with a DVD based cam as opposed to a Hard Disk Drive/Flash Memory based one.
Both would allow you to playback directly from it... but without the cam, you would need to extract to your PC...and then to some playback medium.

As for Makes, I would go with Sony.
Sony cams come with great lenses, Carl Zeiss. Canon and Panasonic give great bang for your buck in terms of features... But Ive found that Sony picture quality has always edged out their competition... in terms of color and low light performance.
Low light performance will make or break a camcorder... because you rarely will get perfect bright lighting (unless you are outside in the sun).
There are lots of sites that give performance breakdowns of particular models, i would give their low light performance greatest weight.

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kamikaze145

I will mostly be using it to watch a few times and then delete it or put it on my youtube account, so i dont need one for like stuff I want to show my kids someday.

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Check out my fights:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Kamikaze145