Here at Camcorderinfo.com, we are always interested in new ways of providing you with the information you need to make buying and using a camcorder easier. So, we are looking at launching a blog for the site, written by bloggers who know the industry and technology of camcorders. What we want to know is what sort of thing you like to see covered in this blog.

Would you like to see coverage of industry events, or should it focus more on the technology of camcorders?

Should it feature tips and techniques for camcorder users?

Would you like to see interviews with people in the industry?

That’s just a few of the questions we have, but we want your feedback and ideas before we start. Please feel free to email them to me or post them here…

Robin Liss
Editor in Chief
CamcorderInfo.com

Of the four things you list, I'd like to see it --

(1) focus more on the technology of camcorders

(2) feature tips and techniques for camcorder users

Thanks! I appreciate the good work you do.

Ditto...

I suspect the majority of visitors to sites like Camcorderinfo.com are looking for the sort of information that will help them choose a camcorder to purchase, or tips on how to improve the material they shoot with the cam they already own. Both these topic areas would satisfy those needs.

hi robin,

having just purchased a camcorder after a lot of deliberation, i think providing a discussion of what low light means to regular people (not in technical terms like lux) would be extremely helpful.

providing tutorials on using settings like exposure and aperature (sp?) would be good.

discussion the pros and cons of buying generic batteries and chargers would be helpful.

explaining the value/benefit of the variety of lenses that are available and when/why you would use them.

the options and best practices for laptop users to hook up a camcorder and external firewire drive when you only have one firewire port and want to capture video from the tape straight to the external drive.

video editing software tips, by package, like what features don't work as intended, hidden features. beginner sample videos before and after being edited in each software package.

tips and techniques on burning dvd's, by package.

if i think of anything else, i'll post it here.

thanks for asking.
indera

Hi Robin,

For the benefit of the camcorder users or to-be-users, I recommend the following:

1. Camparisions between features and performance on the features of competetive brands & models with in a brand in the same price-range.

2. Technicalities of camcorders, lenses, batteries & other accessories, 3CCD/CCD/3CMOS/CMOS differences etc.

3. Latest trends in the camcorder market and reliability & longivity discussions on each technology (like harddisk, microdrive, DVD, miniDV etc)

4. Tips & tricks of effectively using a cam under different situations

5. Industry news

6. Users voting on feature by feature for each model of any maker with their observations & feedback

Thanks for the initiative..

A "vote on features" would be a neat idea! Perhaps a check list of 20 "features" and you have 10 "votes" to put in? (Can we do that?)

eg. I'd put my "10 votes" as:

5 colour video quality
3 low-light sensitivity
0 still photos
0 >100x digital zoom
0 20x optical zoom
0 15x optical zoom
0 automatic controls
0 touchscreen
2 manual controls


Someone more "point and shoot" might allocate their 10 votes:
1 automatic controls
1 touchscreen
0 manual controls
2 small overall size
2 video quality
2 still photo feature
2 20x optical zoom

[edit: I don't know how well this will work, but I'm trying a test poll on our sister site SonyHDVInfo.com http://www.sonyhdvinfo.com/showthread.php?t=2246]

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Sony HDV camcorder info (FX1, CX7, HC3 HC5, SR1/3/5/10, SR11, SR12, TG1, UX1, Z1) -> http://www.SonyHDVinfo.com

I'd like to see multi-camera "shoot-outs" similar to those at
www.videomax.ru/tests

I agree with this. This site helped me chose my camcorder. Tips on how to get the most out of it under various circumstances would be nice. So would tips on using authoring software - can't cover all of them, but maybe the top 3 or 4.
Also, reviews on accessories, especially for items beginners might use that can't be found anywhere else. Try to find a decent review of the ATR25 or ATR55 microphones. And, don't forget lighting and things like LCD hoods. There's a lot of stuff that could be covered that are hard for beginners to find out about.

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Gary

Tweaks & Reviews
www.slottweak.com

Hey all, just thought I'd drop in and say thanks to all for the feedback you provided on the Blog. We are now up and running, so please come on over and give it a read. And don't forget to email me if you like or dislike the stuff I am writing about, or have a cool suggestion...

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/d/Blog.htm


Cheers,

Richard Baguley

I think it would be nice if camcorderinfo adds a way to test stabilisation. Dvspot has made little movies for it, but the problem of that is thatit only shows how it performes when you are aiming on a single not moving object.

I hear a lot of different comments about stabilisation when folowing a moving object (a sort of weird shifting effect) so with eis on you will have a hard time folowing a moving object and keeping it good centered.

I think camcorder factories should make two different electronic stabilisation, one based on centered movement and one based on edge movement. The first for following a moving object and the second one for looking at one spot with moving objects in it and being able to jump from one to the other mode with a push of a button.

It would be nice to see some testing about that as different companies will have different algorithms to contereffect shaking. So stabilisation could be very different across the board of camcorders.

Hi Robin

Great website you guys have already. I'd like to see more tips on video editing software, e.g. how to use Adobe Premiere or Pinnacle Studio - that's an area of video editing that is pretty challenging for many people.

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Gary Hendricks
Desktop-Video-Guide.com

Most importantly, as I sit here deciding on another camcorder, I would like to see some sort of data on reliability and/or repair history. Consumer Reports has this type of data in their November issues, but it appears that they just keep adding new data to old so that some companies that did well ten years ago looks better than one that made recent great strides in improving their product's reliability. For now, I just scan the posts and e-mails

Will

The brand repair history on page 29 of the Nov. 2004 Consumer Reports states that the data are for 37,000 camcorders. The corresponding data on page 17 of the Nov. 2003 issue is for 32,000 camcorders. I ASSUMED they added 5,000 new data items to the earlier data. Perhaps it is just growth in the number of camcorders or growth in the number of camcorders needing repair.

Will

What I'd find most helpful, since I am in the throes of searching for a camcorder to purchase, is a search engine.

Ideally, a search engine would let me rank the features that I am looking for in importance, and then give me a list of cameras which meet my requirements, ordered based upon your ratings. Then I can really compare "apples-to-apples" based on what features are important to me.

Anything like this in the works?

Renee

1) I would like to find out how video looks in manual mode, in bright light and low light.

That's it great job!