Hi there. You recently wrote reviews of both the Panasonic SDR-S26 & the Sanyo VPC-TH1 camcorders. I liked the reviews and both devices seem to have their own advantages. The former has 70x zoom & optical image stabilization, the latter goes 720p.

I am trying to buy a camcorder very soon (within a day or two). The Panasonic would cost me $310 to $32-ish, and a 4GB card is included. The Sanyo costs me $290 and includes an 8GB card. Among the two, which one would you recommend?

I intend to use these to shoot a wedding & related activities in mostly indoors settings with halogen & fluorescent lighting. There may be many people at a time in the frame & a lot of voices, movement is likely.

I would then want to be able to plug the camcorder directly into TVs that are likely to have composite video/audio inputs. (HDMI is unlikely in India, and our own TV here in the US is an old 36in 480p CRT. Only my sister has a 24in 1080p monitor w. only hdmi/dvi input. However, in the US we have computers available all the time, unlike in India.) I want to able to record for 3hrs at once. For editing, I primarily use Windows Movie Maker on XP, and know how to use transcoding tools like TMPEG, Streamer etc. I may upload some videos to youtube or facebook.

Please respond as soon as you can, if you can. I really appreciate any advice you can give me.

Thanks, LL

Re: choosing a camcorder

Hi L.L, glad you liked the reviews. For your particular needs, I think the Panasonic SDR-S26 is probably a better option.

The 70x optical zoom is an excellent feature for shooting weddings - it will allow you to get nice and close and capture fine details without running back and forth. However, you will also need a tripod or the footage will look very shaky at full zoom.

The TH1 offers superior image quality, but the difference isn't massive, especially on a CRT TV. The SDR-S26 also comes with optical image stabilisation which is a very handy feature.

I would go for the Panasonic.

Thanks for responding Chris, but I went for the Sanyo before I saw your reply. I am pretty happy with it, and found that it works well enough when not zoomed in too much and in a steadier set of hands than mine, the video looked very good indeed.

I also picked it because it is the only model I know of that offers 3+ hours of battery life out of the box. The Panasonic requires one to buy another battery+charger for use beyond 1 1/2 hours. The Sanyo's video looks beautiful when the played back on TV by the camcorder itself, but the damned AVCHD files are too much for my weak old computer & new netbook to play back, let alone edit.

However, it is easy to make DVDs of the files with the included Arcsoft software. At 10X + zoom neither the Panasonic or Sanyo appeared particularly steady without a tripod. However, the Panasonic eliminates shake much much better. I bought a gorillapod but didn't quite get to using it.

I finally learnt that A> get OIS when possible, B> HD isn't really necessary yet C> battery-life is also super-important.