The Camcorder (May 13th)

Elena and I were planning on getting a big screen (not as big as I want, but bigger than she wants) HDTV since our old TV is going out. So we were saving up with money from my Birthday and Christmas. With the baby coming, I decided that a camcorder would be a better purchase. So I shopped around (more than I had already). HDTV camcorders are much more prevalent than when I had last shopped. Elena and I had almost bought a camcorder about 3 years ago. We had been planning on getting a 3ccd camcorder from Panasonic, because the color reproduction is supposed to be better.

Anyways... I chose the Canon Vixia HF100. It's 1080 with 30p and 24p modes. It has no onboard memory and uses SD cards (and the new higher capacity SDHC cards). I picked up a 16GB card which will record 2 hours worth of HD video. The battery only works for 1 hour, and we'll pick up a 2 hour battery sometime. Canon's have won a lot of best camcorders as a brand (and I've got a digital camera and multifunction which I like from Canon). I didn't choose the one with built in flash because I can get a card for that 16gb card cheaper, and prices on the cards will go down. A hard drive would be nice but would have driven up price, size, and weight while decreasing the battery life. It has a CMOS sensor (I had been looking for a 3CCD because I thought they were always better) but in my reading I've heard that CMOS can be equivalent or superior to 3CCDs, depending on setup.

UPS came and tried to drop it off, but nobody was home, so I drove to the UPS place and picked it up, (even though it was down by Galveston).

I've already got my first video to submit to America's funniest home videos.