I bought an HC30 a month back for Rs 28000 from the grey market when Marked price was Rs 41990.Today the marked price is down to Rs 38990, so I think I lost about Rs 2000 or so. Neverthe less, its a very good one. The Physical details etc I will not repeat here as I consider this a consumer site and not a marketing site. You will get detailed specs and reviews on https://camcorderinfo.com.
I did a lot of research before I zeroed on to this one and I am not dissatisfied.
As most of us I was on a budget to spend Rs20000 or so to get a good one. I was considering the TRV 265.However the size is too big. My HC30 is the smallest of the HC series, but is large enough to fit in my hands, so you can imagine- You will look like ’’The Videographer’’ if you go with a Big One in a public place. Also a Big handycam is not a ’’handy’’ cam. The Cassette prices are Rs115 for Hi8 and Rs150 for Mini DV at the grey Market. Not much difference. I have been takin video clips of my little daughter aged 6 months and its a great delight to watch her on TV.
Some Pluses: Low light performance is better than I read from Camcorderinfo reviews. I took my daughters video at 6:00 pm in the evening and it came out very nice.audio is also good. Slight motor noise can be heard though.The colours are quite well reproduced. I chose this against an HC40 because of the law of marginal utility. From what I read, above 340 k pixels upto about 1 Megapixels there is hardly any improvement in video performance. For still performance only digital cameras above 3.2 MegaPixels are worth talking of, so not much to choose between HC 30 and HC40.
Rest all are more or less same between HC30 and 40 so I went for HC 30. Lower down HC 20 was worth considering, but when you can get still photography for a slightly higher price why not go for it, even if still photos of camcorders are not worth discussing about. I still have to tr out the memory stick. One Minus is that I could not get good quality video when I connected it with my compy. I have to explore it though.I had not got the computer applications guide from my vendor. I got only the CD. Can anyone tell me where it is available on the net?
The handycam is very easy to use, though it feels quite fragile (don’t give it to your kids)