Anyone have a camcorder they would recommend or know about these things?

I am thinking of mounting one in the car - you all know what i mean

I guess I want a digital one but there seems to be a vast choice. What do I actually need and what would be nice to have?

also has anyone made a roll bar mounting for one? if so how have you done it?

TIA

Mark

My mate mounts digital cameras on the roll bars in banger cars. He just made a metal box for the camera to fit in, and lined it with foam. The foam is fairly high density, just enough to cut out most of the vibration.

You can get digital camcorders pretty cheaply these days. Are you intending on using it for normal recording as well?

IIRC my mate thinks that Sony and Panasonic camcorders are the best, and he has had quite a few different ones over the years.

As for format, Mini DV od digital8 are the main two digital formats. MiniDV have the best quality, and also the smallest camera, but they are more expensive than the Di8 ones.

All depends what you want really.

David

I've been looking at digi camcorders today as it happens! I've always like sony and panasonic (though never owned either) and I was very interested in the dvd based modesl when they came out. The panasonic system is meant otbe better from what I've read as the way it indexes tracks on a disc and can jump around to fill all the gaps when writing data whereas I was told the sony ones weren't as versatile in this way.

Today I've been looking at solid state digital camcorders, basically no moving parts and based on sd or mmc memory cards! There are few available and they tend to be lower end of the market which suits me!

Sanyo make an mpeg4 digi camera/camcorder available from amazon for about £230 which seems quite good. 640x480 @ 30fps which I believe is about the same resolution as a normal tv broadcast. obviously the memory cards are more expensive than tapes but it's the way forward imho as you can download them to your pc then burn them onto cd/dvd's or put them on the web/email.

Solid state also has the benefit of no moving parts, so no risk of judder or skipping when mounted to a car (i hope!)

link for info on the sanyo thingy, available as said from amazon
http://www.sanyo.co.uk/scripts/hsrun.exe/Distributed/iFramework_UK/iFramework_UK.htx;flag=restart;start=HS_FSGen_US

Ned.

This is a good site for mounting brackets. I bought the camcorder mounting kit.

http://www.b-hague.co.uk/Mounting%20Brackets.htm

I was recommended Sony and Canon DV camcorders for track work.

Look for a model with remore MIC (to avoid wind noise) input and analogue AV input. The latter is for use with bullet cameras.

I am getting a panasonic one off a bloke i know. If u want to mount it in a car the image stabiliser thing would be good to have in it..

i bought a bottom of the range Cannon DV. I cant fault it. Im no spielburg tho.
It has firewire connection so can be linked to laptop to burn DVD's. Nottried this yet - cable is on shopping list.

Doesn't Hicost do video for cars?

yes he does. http://www.f1camera.co.uk i believe. good units, but for the money some people prefer to buy a normal camcorder that they can use for other things and get one with a dv-in so they can plug a bullet camera into it as mentioned above.

Ned.

Isnt it "Analogue In" that you need for a bullet camera? DV input just allows you to edit stuff on your PC then re-record it back to the tape ISTR (might be wrong though)

Chris

You can't go wrong with Canon. Their lenses are the dogs. For best (near broadcast) quality get one with 3CCD. Having said that I'm rather tempted by Sony's new HDTV offering.

we killed a camera at Knockhill after several laps. It was a tape based analog one that didnt like the extreme gforces dished out when braking for the hairpin.
Mac replaced it with a sharp camera the same size as a mobile phone!
I would go for Hicosts system as it gives better flexibility for alternate camera angles.