What is the best video camera I can use for movie making on a budget?

Panasonic HDC-TM80K had almost everything I was looking for; Internal memory, SD card slot, huge optical Zoom, perfect size, lots of nice control features. Easy menu! But where it matters most, this camera fell short. What a shame too. I really wanted this camera to be the one to use on my next vacation. it also has a sports & portrait & low light modes.

What you just described is a $8000 video camera. If you're looking for decent HD video your talking upwards of $3000. interchangeable lenses $6000+. If you want truly decent quality, you're goin' to spend several thousands. I do freelance HD videos and shoot on a $80,000 HD camera, and I can tell you, you will have to choose between quality and price. You're not going to have both in that price range. What I would recommend is that you look into the canon rebel t1i. It costs more than u stated, and can only record for a few minutes at a time, but you will not find what you want anywhere near your price range. Here is a music video shot on the t1i, not a fan of the music, but you can tell the quality of the camera. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1nbYfMtyAk&hd=1

Consumer level HD camcorders have 4 problems. 1) Blurry, fuzzy, out of focus areas closely around people in videos taken by consumer level HD camcorders. 2) Any movement, even a wave or lifting an arm, while in front of a recording consumer level HD camcorder, results in screen ghosts and artifacts being left on the video track, following the movement. Makes for bad video, sports videos are unwatchable. 3) These Consumer level HD camcorders all have a habit of the transferred to computer files are something you need to convert, thus losing your HD quality, to work with your editing software. 4) Mandatory maximum record times - 1 hour, 30 minutes, 8 minutes, 3 minutes – four different times advertised as maximum record time for some consumer level HD camcorders. No event I have ever been to is that short. Either take multiple camcorders or pack up with out getting the end of the event on video. With a MiniDV tape camcorder, record 60 or 90 minutes ( camcorder settings), 90 seconds or less to change a tape and record for 60 or 90 more and repeat till you run out of tapes. You can get a Canon ZR960 for $250. It is a MiniDV tape camcorder, has a Mic jack. You will need a firewire (IEEE1394) card ($25 to 30) for the computer and a firewire cable (less than 10) to be able to transfer video to your computer. To say this is not HD, think about this. It would cost in excess of $3500 to get a HD camcorder that could equal the video Quality of a $250 Canon MiniDV tape camcorder.