Sunday, September 11, 2005

A New Cam

Bought a new camcorder yesterday (sold the Goldwing so I had to buy something to replace it...). I got the Panasonic PV-GS31. I had been looking at various models all up and down the price range for quite awhile and, as usual, I couldn't decide if the wiz-bang features of the higher priced models out-weighed my cheapskate tendencies. The more expensive cams have better picture quality and more manual controls which appeals to the techie in me but I also know that I barely use any of those kinds of thing in the real world. I just want to point and shoot - the cameras are smarter than I am anyway. So, I got the low priced model and I'm glad I did.

One of the reasons I was pining for a new cam (when I have one that still works) was because the new models (MiniDV) capture digital video. This makes it much easier to send the video to the PC for editing. Plus, you can send the back to the camera from the computer for storage (a tape still holds lots more video than a CD or even a DVD). Well, I hooked up the camera to the PC and guess what. I couldn't get it to send my test video to the computer. I tried everything. I didn't know if the problem was with the camera or the PC so I ended up going back to Circuit City and plugging it into one of their computers. Worked fine. Looser salesman said "you had it on Play right?" "Of course!" I said. Oops... Went home hooked it up again. Works fine. Ok, next time I really am going to read the instructions.

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