Video Cameras

Being a bit of a technology head (that is my nice term for it), I know a bit about this sort of stuff!

JVC or Sony are the only way to go. I have a JVC video camera and it is so easy to use and a Sony digital camera and that is easy too.

One thing to look for is to make sure they have little cassettes. They are cheap ($10) and reliable. If you FIL is a real shopper, he could get bag/tape etc thrown in when he buys.

You should be able to get both brands cheaply over in Singapore.

Hi Claire,
Something that you might want to look at also is the repairs side of things. If you buy a brand that isn't huge in NZ then it may have to be sent away to Japan, china etc to be fixed, which can take precious month of bubs growing up!! . If it is a common brand then you have a better chance of getting it fixed locally, quicker.

We recently bought a Sony Handycam, one of the ones that burn straight onto mini cds. It's great, no cables, you can just whack the disc into any dvd player/drive and off you go. The discs are a bit expensive, about $16 for a 1 hour double sided one, but you burn from them onto the plain DVD discs, we only have one and that's enough for now, and were told they have a lifespan of about 1000 rewrites. It was $1100, with disc, case and 20 plain DVDs, and if you get one before January they come with a free sony dvd player too!

Hi Claire,

We just recently bought a JVC envirio G camera. It tapes directly on the hard drive. No disc, no tapes and you can tape up to 24 hours on the harddrive, much longer than the opther ones.
It is great and very handy to edit on your computer. They are not supercheap but you will save in replacables. You will now find them for about $1150 on sale.