Best Movie Camera for Christmas 2010 With Flash Memory

JVC GZ-HM550 movie camera 32 gig bytes of memory and you can add a card for long recording periods like a relatives wedding. Great Camera but two things are odd. 1. It does not come with the cable to be able to play back the movie in HD. Mini-HDMI cable has much better picture than the standard cable in the kit. 2. Factory setting inside the camera is XP (high quality) you must choose UXP (high-definition) then it prompts you with a warning it can only be copied to Blu-ray. Well that makes sense but during the copy process if you use a DVD it automatically downgrades the recording to XP for the copy. You will still have the UXP on the camera. Being rather techie I would default to record in the highest format so that the information is captured then you can choose a lesser quality recording device if you want. I am thinking from the studios perspective they use really high quality because if it’s not there at the recording site you can’t rebroadcast and make up the missing quality. Your reviewing of the movie from disk is your broadcast. The DVD player can’t make up quality that was not put down on the disk.

So that said, Buy it it’s a great camera. Order the cable at purchase and when you get the camera read the directions and change the setting right away to UXP. You will be happy with the quality and the camera easy to use. Battery life can be as long as 1.5 hours in constant use and must be charged on the camera. This can shorten to 45 minutes of use for intermittent 8-10 minute shots over several days. Get the stand-alone charger and a high-capacity battery. This gives you two batteries and one can always be in the charger. Like on Christmas morning. The camera will record 2 1/2 hours.

It has great software features that let you organize your movies in calendar form. All in all I am very satisfied with the camera.