Hi Hilary,
I want to buy a small hand held camera (that i can carry around with me in my handbag) so that i can take little clips of my 8 month old baby when he does something amusing or tries something for the first time. My budget is limited since we spent quite a bit on a digital camera at Christmas. I'm not sure whether it would be better to buy one that uses mini DVDs or one that has an internal hard drive.
Many thanks
Most compact digital cameras have movie recording modes, Pentax and Casio have very sophisticated DiVX movie recording and fast widescreen capture, with even onboard film editing. If you are looking for just a camcorder have a look at the Sanyo Xacti range that use SD cards (SDHC cards are cheap and go up to 16GB now!) and are very small and easy to use, with excellent movie quality recording. Hard Disk camcorders are all quite a bit larger and would be a bit bulky for carrying around in a handbag. Mini DVD recorders are also not handbag sized, but have a look at the Canon DC230, which is as small as a mini dvd camcorder can get and is very highly rated, please note all of these options, apart from the cameras cost over £240! The cameras with very good movie recording modes start at £80!
Most compact digital cameras have movie recording modes, Pentax and Casio have very sophisticated DiVX movie recording and fast widescreen capture, with even onboard film editing. If you are looking for just a camcorder have a look at the Sanyo Xacti range that use SD cards (SDHC cards are cheap and go up to 16GB now!) and are very small and easy to use, with excellent movie quality recording. Hard Disk camcorders are all quite a bit larger and would be a bit bulky for carrying around in a handbag. Mini DVD recorders are also not handbag sized, but have a look at the Canon DC230, which is as small as a mini dvd camcorder can get and is very highly rated, please note all of these options, apart from the cameras cost over £240! The cameras with very good movie recording modes start at £80!