Welcome everyone to camcordertown.

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This is camcordertown, where I document my adventures into the magnificently obsolete world of CAMCORDERS. I bring a 'Corder with me basically everywhere basically all the time, so I think I've gotten medium-OK versed in the ways of this magnificantlly obsolete technology. Magnifisint!

When next summer or spring rolls around, I'll add some RAW VIDEO from these camcorders. But not right now because I'm LAZY!

The SONY DCR-TRV19 THIS? is PROBABLY my favorite MiniDV camera. It's small, it's nice, it doesn't take those crappy InfoLithium P batteries, it's got an ACCESSORY SHOE (which I NEVER use), a MIC INPUT (which I NEVER USE), NightShot (which I ALWAYS USE), and it even uses the older Handycam branding that I prefer solely for hipster reasons. It feels pretty nice in the hands, and honestly I prefer larger camcorders over the super tiny ones that you have to wrap your entire hand around. Yuck!

The SONY DCR-HC26 by SONY. This is like basically a worse version of the DCR-TRV19. It may be smaller more petit AND even more compact, BUT. THAT doesn't make up for the more schitty build quality, the lackluster colors, the noise, and the slow slow zoom. Yikesauce bruh! BUT! If you can get one for a good price that works it's probably worth it considering how cool MiniDV is yes yes yes. ALSO NO MIC INPUT!

The DCR-HC40 by SONY This is much like the HC26 directly above, but taller. Also, it throws away the horrible concept of the "Lens-Cap" and instead makes use of some amazing Future Tech, a manual lens cover. Not only is this convenient, but the switch inside that detects if the cover is closed or open can break and it can always say that it's closed, which is what happened on mine. Unlike the HC-26, this one has one of those proprietary Sony accessory shoes. The Active Interface Shoe or something. Not that I have anything for it. Also, although this quite literally does not matter at ALL, it's user interface shows a 3d model representing whatever mode you switch to.

DCR... TRV... 103? HIP HIP YIPEE! Wowza ballowza. Here we got a real doozasaurous wrecks. Check it. It's a Ditigal8 camcorder. The very first one, I think. It looks pretty awesome and the video is perfectly equal, if not slightly better, than many of Sony's MiniDV offerings from the mid-00s. It also has a real, true-to-life accessory shoe. Crazy shit dude. HOWEVER! Just like all the other ones I've listed here, it lacks a video light. And while it has NightShot, it's just a big fat square in the middle of the picture. You don't see very much, unfortunately.

ANALOG CCD-TR940.... SONY! RAW VIDEO HEERE! Now THIS is where technology peaked. It's an analog BEAST that records Hi8 video. But not just any Hi8 video. Hi8 XR video. According to VWestlife who I'm ripping off, Hi8 XR is the highest resolution analog video format Sony ever brought to a consumer camcorder! What a title! Along with that, this guy's got a super bright halogen spotlight, the ORIGINAL version of NightShot, a titler, and also a whole bunch of other crazy stuff. It records two hours of video to tape and can take massive batteries that are still made today! Only downside: NO FLIP-OUT LCD! Pretty inconvenient but I don't care. This thing ROCKS!