I initially was looking forward to the new Canon HF S100, the follow up to last years Canon HF11, the camcorder that ruled all camcorders. It still does, actually, when it comes to price. But I want a good all around camcorder with the newest technology, and this year's competition was surprisingly fierce. Not only did Sony and Panasonic give Canon a run for its money, but Sanyo's mid-range camcorder kicked everybody's ass in terms of low-light filming. It sucked in most others, but only when compared to the high end models, which is what I was looking at. Another thing the Sanyo VPC-HD2000 had going for it was the 60p recording, which is unheard of in consumer camcorders, so it had possibly the smoothest recording out of all of them. Pretty impressive for a mid-range camcorder. If anybody is looking for something around $600 - $700, check this one out.
But the Panasonic. The HDC-HS300 is the 120 GB hard drive version of the HDC-TM300, which has a 32 GB flash memory built in. Both camcorder have an additional SDHC slot that can hold up to an additional 32GB flash card. Flash is the future, because you can shake the camera all around and not worry about moving parts breaking, like the hard drive. I didn't want a hard drive model because of this, but with the inclusion of the flash memory, I can use it for potentially shaky times while falling back on the hard drive for main recording, because really, 120 GB can hold up to 15 hours of video at the highest quality settings. And that's fantastic. Each flash card, by comparison, can hold about 4 hours, which is not bad at all. Honestly, I may just buy the TM300.
Both models are the same under the hood and scored decent to (mostly) high on all video performance tests. What I'm very happy about, and what sold me, is the fact that it's low-light sensitivity is up there with the Sanyo model, and I know I'm going to be using this guy at night, or during karaoke, when it's dark. Finally, a perk that I wanted to enjoy was the very high shutter capability, at 1/8000, which will allow me to take some cool slow-motion shots. The Sony has a function for it in short bursts in the seconds, but this one is continual and only requires a bit of editing (Sony's does it on the fly).
Now that I've picked one, all that's left is to find a vendor that has an affordable but good warranty. Anybody have suggestions? I love Dell's warranties, but they don't carry this model. =/
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