joint xmas gift, looking for a great camera/camcorder

[Regk]

hey all,

My wife and i are looking for a decent camcorder/digital camera. As a point of comparison, we have a fuji finepix z33 that takes care of our pics/ movies. As you can imagine the pics are ok, but the movies pretty much suck, very grainy and not very good low light performance. We would like to have a swiss army knife device that can do it all, and is rugged to boot. The only thing i really like about the z33 is the waterproofness. I came across a panasonic rugged model that sported a better zoom, higher MP and 720 video.

We are also considering just getting a straight up camcorder, i guess my only pre requisite would be great low light performance.

Budget is 300 to 500 dollars. Would perfer if could be found at a canadian retailer but will also entertain shopping online.

Thanks!

 

[Kaido]

As an alternative...Zoom has a new pocketcam out - the Q3HD. If you don't need a Zoom, it's a pretty neat little camera for around $300. It has amazing microphones and does pretty awesome low-light for being under $2500. Here's a link:

http://www.samsontech.com/products/productpage.cfm?prodID=2062

Here's a sample from a concert:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9moZKyRs-us

Any other pocket cam would be uber grainy, but this one does amazingly well! My sister has a Kodak Zi6 pocketcam and it's ridiculously bad in low light - tons and tons of grain, haha. I have a Kodak Playsport (Zx3 model, I think) and it does much better, but not quite as good as the Zoom Q3HD, although the Kodak is waterproof/dustproof/dropproof, which is really nice.

I also have a Canon SX200IS, which is a great stills/video cam that does 720p. I would get this over the newer SX220IS, because they changed a few things on it that the SX200IS does better. It's around $250. It also has a megazoom (12x optical), which is really, really nice. Here's a little video I did earlier this year:

http://www.vimeo.com/11391910

Looks just as good outdoors as my Canon HV20 MiniDV camcorder did. Very happy with the quality.