Which Camcorder is better??

Which Mini DV camcorder has better quality?

• I am currently borrowing my friend's Sony Handycam DCR-HC52. Another friend of mine just gave me his Canon ZR-500 camcorder. Both of them are Mini DV. The Sony camcorder has 40x optical zoom while the Canon camcorder has 25x optical zoom. I'm thinking the Sony would be better since the optical zoom is much better. It also has Nightshot Plus (an infrared LED turns on and acts as a flashlight in the dark. The camera lens picks it up as a green-colored light. The Canon camcorder has Night Mode but it simply boosts the brightness, lowers the frame rate and makes the video look really grainy. The only thing the Canon camcorder has that the Sony camcorder doesn't have is a microphone jack to connect an external mic, which I don't need to use anyway. Which camcorder do you think is the best as far as video quality and sound quality goes? Or are they the same?

• Answer:

  A MIC port is the most valuable thing on either camcorder. You would have to spend some cash on a Microphone and Mixer for good sound quality and never need to worry about syncing you video and audio if the camcorder had a MIC port, Unless the total time of the event your covering exceeds the record time on one tape, then a expensive Digital Audio Recorder and it could be used for continuity of audio in the video while you change tapes. I have 3 Canon MiniDV tape camcorder, A ZR500 included. Zoom is irrelevant, it so seldom used. You also need to know about camcorder internal microphones. They record sound good up to about 4 feet from the camcorder. Beyond that, the audio levels drop the further from the camcorder you get. In a noisy environment, that sound drop is near vertical. http://youtu.be/D24DY4hMODI At night with the Canon, turn off the Easy feature and use the boxed P feature instead. That is Manual mode. If you press the round button on your display screen when the camcorder is turned on, recording or not, you get Focus and Exposure level buttons. Use these, setting the exposure first, focus tip below. But no last, I have to say I do hope you have the Firewire port in your computer so you can transfer these videos into it. Focus tip - set camcorder on a tripod or firm surface. Find something far away ( I use a Post it Note, on far wall above light switch, You could maybe use a car a license plate, parked a block away, if your outdoors) then zoom in on this object, all the way. Focus your camcorder on this object. Now return you camcorder to normal zoom, show the big picture. Now, if you do not turn the camcorder off or touch the focus controls, it will be in focus from the distance away your focus object was to the camcorder lens, at any zoom ( say your focus object was 15 feet, everything up to 15 feet will be in focus, anything beyond that 15 feet is not.) And I will give this to, just in case When using a device to capture audio that is not your camcorder, use this tip to be able to SYNC your audio and video together once both are put on a timeline for video editing purposes. Standing close to Microphone, in front of your camcorder, with both recording devices recording the video and audio, CLAP, LOUDLY. Now so long as the recorders stay recording, you have a sync point so when you get back to the computer, it is much easier to sync the audio and video together.