Deciding on a Professional HD Digital Camcorder

Do you want to buy a professional high definition camcorder? If so, you really need to read this article. We will start by taking a look at the features of a high definition camcorder. After that we will go through the main brands and see what range of products each one has to offer.

Main Features of a Professional HD Digital Camcorder

Manual Aperture: it’s important to be able to manually alter the aperture size of your camcorder. This gives you control over the amount of light that passes through the lens and into the camcorder, and therefore gives you control over how light or dark your image will be.
Manual Focus: auto focus has a tendency to cause the camera to drop in an out of focus depending on what objects come in and out of the scene. With manual focus, you have full control to be able to stay focussed on your intended object.
3 CCDs: a CCD is a chip in the camcorder that records the image as digital information. 3 CCD chips means better quality images.
White Balance: different scenes have a different balance of colors. For instance, the light inside your house has a yellow tint, but light from the sun is more towards the blue end. With manual white balance control, you can set the color tone to your liking.
Audio Control: being able to manually control the sound recording volume is important, as some scenes will be louder or quiter than other scenes.
Headphone Jack: it is important to be able to monitor the sound via headphones, so check that the camcorder has a headphone jack.
Filter Ring: does the camcorder have a screw ring around the lens? This will enable you to add various filters, for example a polarising filter or even just a UV filter to protect the lens from scratches.
Sound Inputs: all camcorders have their own micrphones built-in, but what if you want to connect your own microphone so that you can record audio from a specific person or object?
Auto Settings: although you definitely want to be able to take control with manual settings, there may be times when you want to let automatic settings take over, so make sure your camera does have some automatic controls along with the manual controls.
Lens Adapters or Removable Lens: only the very high end camcorders have removable lenses, but some camcorders allow you to use lens adaptors to modify the existing lens to change to wide angle, telephoto, etc.

Top Pro High Definition Digital Camcorder Makes & Their Product Ranges

There aren't actually a huge number of professional camcorder brands out there, because professional camcorders are quite a specialist product.

Panasonic: $670-$6,000. A decent range of high quality high definition camcorders across a big price range.
Sony: $1,500-$5,200. As with Panasonic, a good range spread across a broad spectrum of prices.
Canon: $2,100-$10,000. A small number of very high-quality professional digital camcorders.
JVC: $3,500-$5,400. A small number of very high-end high definition camcorders.