Whats a good camcorder to get?

Whats the best sony camcorder to get?

• iwant something that i can transfer onto dvd but it has to be sony or a brand just as good. i want it to be no more than $400 and i want something with alot of zoom thanks in advance

• Answer:

  The biggest zoom available in that range is the Canon ZR950. It also has an external mic jack - but no manual audio control The Sony DCR-HC96 can have an external mic jack if you add one of these http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/479976-REG/Sony_VMCK100_VMC_K100_Microphone_Adapter.html but still no manual audio control... but it does have a "Normal" or "Low" menu selection to change the mic gain ("Low" is for loud noise environments). DO NOT BUY A DVD BASED CAMCORDER. There is no hard drive based camcorder worth buying in the price range you have provided - same with Flash memory. MiniDV tape provides the best available video quality because it stores in DV format - which is a lot less compression than MPEg2 (which is what the other storage formats use). You will need a firewire400 port on your computer - add one if you don't have one. If you use a Mac, it probably already has one. You will need a firewire cable (most likely 4-pin - camera DV port - to 6-pin - computer firewire400 port.