Can you recommend a video camera?

[Sonny]

I joined Toastmasters International last year when my company started its own group. To better help our speakers improve, our group wants to start recording the speeches. This way each speaker can go back, watch their video and see for themselves how they preformed.

Can y'all recommend a vid cam with the follow:

• Price - $100-$200
• No software need to convert videos. File format preferred mov, avi, or mpg.
• Easy to use
• Even easier to retrieve videos.

[Dobick]

Don't know of any, but I am interested in the answers

[KD5NRH]

In a well-lighted venue, with the camera close enough to the speaker to allow their upper body to fill the frame without using digital zoom (this also keeps it close enough to get good audio with minimal ambient noise pickup) and with external power available, pretty much anything in your price range should be fine. Proprietary file formats seem to be specific to the super-cheapies in the under $75 range, and the main limitation of most others is lousy low-light performance. Since nearly everything uses some sort of memory card these days, storage is probably the last thing you need to worry about.

[toverman]

Maybe a point-and-shoot digital camera in movie mode? Might be all you need.

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

Flip Cams give reasonabley clean video for your price range and the even have a HD version out now for a bit more (have not seen that video yet but should be good), easy to operate, runs on 2 AA batteries, has a tripod mount, about the size of a deck of cards, USB pops out and then plug and play.
http://www.theflip.com/en-us/Products/mino.aspx

[Dobick]

Originally Posted by toverman

Maybe a point-and-shoot digital camera in movie mode? Might be all you need.

My g-9 was super easy, and the audio wasn't too bad. an 8gb card, and I can record 1080 twice up to 15 minutes. Retrieval was easy as well, transfer the file over to a computer and double click. If you record standard definition, then you can get a few hours on an 8gb card.

You would not need a g-9 to accomplish this, I would bet any point and shoot whould accomplish this for you.

[Imagebuffet]

My Pentax Optio W60 cost me $240 from Adorama. It shoots 1050p HD video and has the greatest range in a lens for a P&S (5x), with a very nice wide angle. I can record 32 minutes of HD video at a time. The battery gets really drained after about 45 minutes to an hour of recording. Here is my YouTube page with video from this (and other) cameras:

http://www.youtube.com/pooua

The Canon ZR line is a fine line of budget video cameras, if you want a more robust video camera. They are close to your price range.

[janikphoto]

The panasonic Lumix point and shoots seem to make decent video. They are cheap.

If you wanna do it right, though, you need about a grand for a JVC or similar HD camcorder and rode external mic.

[janikphoto]

I can't figure out how to delete this accidental post...

[Sonny]

Thanks for all the suggestions. Sounds like a PnS is the way yo go. My wife has a Canon PowerShot SD790IS. I'll give it a try next week.