I did it again. I bought myself a new toy. While my girlfriend is on the other side of the ocean buying a house, I decided I wanted a digital camcorder to record our trip to Paris were we will be as of June 9th. We had a camcorder with us when we went to New York in 2001 (just a few weeks before the September 11th attack) but that was a NTSC camcorder that Carrie got from a collegue. Well, this time I bought a camcorder myself. I bought the Sony DCR-TRV33E, a nice 1 megapixel MiniDV camera with a 2.5″ touchscreen, DV-in and out, S-VHS in/out, USB streaming, memorystick etc.etc.. All in all a nice package witch lots of options and the camera received good reviews.
I had my choice of camera’s narrowed down to the Sony and the JVC GR-DX300 which is one of those really small cigarette box camera’s. The JVC got the camera of the year award from a magazine called Media Totaal and I must say I liked it a lot. It has a 3″ screen and weighs less than the Sony. It also has a 1.3 megapixel camera mode instead of 1.03. But the design in general seems less ergonomical than the Sony. Besides that it has the microphone on top of the lens and not in front of it which makes me believe that the sound would be less than with the Sony. Also, filming with the screen open will consume lots of energy, so my choice would be to film using the viewfinder. And the JVC only has a B&W viewfinder but the Sony has a color viewfinder. Besides that: when holding the JVC I found that one is very likely to cover the microphone (on top of the lens).
Together with the cam I bought three tapes, another battery (the stand one will allow you to film about 30-40 minutes) a nice camera bag, a UV-filter and (shame on Sony) a firewire cable that wasn’t included. Also, I tried the camera with the brand new iChat AV from Apple (cool!) which turns the cam into a webcam. And the camera works like a charm with iMovie thats included with Apple OS X.
All in all, I’m ready to enter the movies!