Camcorders have made shooting a real breeze.

Camcorders have made shooting a real breeze. You can create movies, make copies on CD or DVDs or even YouTube them – the options are numerous. You could need a camcorder to make a Blair witch prodigy or you could need it for the various family gatherings like weddings, reunions, birthdays, graduations and religious activities. Whatever your needs, there are hundreds of options to choose from. Here is a guide to finding the best camcorder for filming family events. 

If you are a first time buyer, then go for portability as it takes some getting used to. Most camcorders today are light, however, choose the one thats most comfortable to hold. Secondly depending on your requirements, go for a small or big sized camcorder. The current rage is compact-sized camcorders, but small gadgets come with smaller controls and buttons, so if youre not comfortable with tiny operations then a mid-size would be ideal. 

KEY FEATURES  Screen:  A large screen is comfortable for shooting especially if youre not quite used to the moving camera. But take into account the fact that more often than not with LCD screens you wont be able to see much in bright sunlight. This is where the viewfinder steps in. it also saves on the camcorder's battery life.

Lens:  Unlike digital cameras, camcorder manufacturers don't always distinguish clearly between digital and optical zoom. Most modern camcorders have at least a 10X optical zoom, which is decent enough. But in a camcorder a digital zoom magnifies the image only after youve fully extended the image with an optical zoom. This method leads to grainy, pixilated, and generally not very good-looking images. 

Image stabilization:  This is very critical as most of us have shaky hands. There are two types of image stabilization—optical or electronic. With optical stabilization, the camcorders lens mechanism moves to compensate for external movement. In electronic image stabilization, the image captured by the lens floats on the CCD, and the camcorder uses internal circuitry after the image has been captured to interpret the video. Between the two, optical stabilisation is more effective; however, this is available with the high-end camcorders.

Battery:  Usually camcorders can record for at least an hour with an included battery; however the recording and playback time differs from one battery type to another. Additional higher-capacity batteries will cost more.

Microphone: 

Sound is almost as important to a video as the images. Generally camcorders with microphones mounted in the front tend to produce better sound than those with microphones on the top; top mounted microphones often pick up the voice of the person operating the camera, drowning out  everything else. Some camcorders offer zoom microphones that emphasize the subjects voice when the zoom lens is used, and some also come with a socket for plugging in an external microphone. 

Still photography:  Many digital camcorders can serve as digital cameras, saving still images to a memory card. Some can save images at the same resolution as a 5-megapixel camera. 

Controls: As mentioned before, theres only so much novelty of a small and ultra compactcamcorder if controls of the camcorders are barely visible to the naked eye. It is better to hold a camcorder and experiment with its controls before buying. Smaller controls are difficult to operate especially if you have big hands. Night mode: 

Here the camcorder uses a special slowshutter mode so that it can absorb all the available light (ambient lighting, or built-in illumination from one or more LEDs) and produce footage that is distinctive. Some models offer all three methods.

Format:  Most camcorders use the MiniDV, HDD and DVD formats, but a few other formats available, such as Flash memory and the latest Dual Flash Memory (video can be recorded on inbuilt flash memory and on a SD card). MiniDV camcorders record video for upto 60-90 seconds, depending upon the recording speed selected. DVD camcorders have the capability to record videos upto 60 minutes, depending on a single or a dual layer DVD disk. Hard Drive Camcorders come with inbuilt storage capacity starting from 30 GB. Flash memory-based camcorders are smaller still, but their recording time is limited by card capacity.

Wide-angle shooting:  There are many camcorders that allow you to shoot with 16:9 aspect ratio, which is used by HDTV. This gives you the absolute wide-angle experience. Of course, even the traditional 4:3 aspect ratio camcorders offer this feature but the effect isn't quite the same.

High-definition recording:  There are many camcorders available with high-definition recording feature – HDV. Because HDV is highly compressed, it requires a very powerful computer to decode the files and an HDV compatible video-editing application to edit them. (Even a powerful computer will take much more time to render HDV less than standard-definition, DV-format files.)

To brush up, consider a camcorder with at least 10x optical zoom, buy a higher capacity battery to shoot for longer hours, buy an external microphone for the best sound and make sure your camcorder has a slot to plug it in. Finally, since MiniDV is the most widely used format, it is better to consider the format.