Camcorder to buy - 1 chip, 3 chip, HD, None of the above

Question

Hello all,
I'm considering a camcorder. I have an old analog camcorder which produces acceptable quality video in iMovie after importing via an A/D converter. I'm thinking about a new digital camcorder and am wondering if anyone knows firsthand if the 3 chip CCD types are really a significant quality jump over the legacy 1 chip CCD units. I'm also considering just hanging on to my analog unit and then jumping straight to the Hi Def camcorders in a year or so. Comments?
Also, are the 1 CCD digital camcorders really an improvement in video quality over the analog units when viewed on a traditional TV?
Greg

Answer 1

It all depends on (a) what you want to spend, and (b) whether you really can see and/or appreciate the better quality which you get with the best of today's camcorders ..and if the rest of your audience can.
Analogue camcorders were perfectly OK when there were only analogue camcorders. And now you can edit their footage digitally - and flawlessly - with iMovie, instead of ruining the picture by copying tape to tape, as people did in the seventies and eighties.
3-CCD cams do give a better picture ..smoo-oother colour, less "grainy" pictures in dim light.. than 1-CCD cameras. But if you're shooting mainly outdoors in bright light you probably wouldn't see any difference at all. On the other hand, if you're shooting children's school plays indoors; weddings in dim churches; exotic mosques, temples and glow-worm caves on your holidays, or inside museums and galleries, then the better quality pictures from a 3-CCD camera would be apparent. But that may not be important to you. You may be perfectly happy with slightly 'grainy', dark pictures, if they catch the 'ambience', or feel of the place, nevertheless.
Essentially, you wouldn't know what you were missing - if anything - unless you did side-by-side comparisons ..and no-one's going to shoot their holidays on two different camcorders simultaneously, just to compare results! [..Are they?..]
For most home videos, 1-chip cameras are perfectly good enough! And if your TV's rather old, the imperfect picture on an older tube may not reveal any difference between 1-chip and 3-chip anyway. The only way you could tell, to your own satisfaction, is to spend some time (..make it two or three hours..) in a big electronics store, trying several different camcorders.
What's important to me is that a camera has manual controls as well as automatic settings, so that I can manually set the shutter speed, white balance, audio, and I can add an extra wide-angle lens to the front ..and a proper microphone.. so that I can shoot what I want to shoot ..not just what the camera wants to give me. So I'll want the widest possible view (..for shooting indoors..) with the best possible sound, and the best light I can gather. But if you just want "snapshot" home movies, why bother with all that?
Save your money till hi-def becomes mainstream? ..Sounds reasonabubble.