What's the best video cam to bring when traveling?

Hello everyone -

My family will have a long vacation in France and I don't want to miss a moment. So I'm looking for the best video camera to bring. Any suggestions? Are Cisco Flip camcorders good enough? Please help!

Thanks for your input. :)

[ Edited by: nicerhotel 2010-02-17 04:05 ]

[ Edited by: nicerhotel 2010-02-17 04:05 ]

[ Edited by: Hakalugi - Removed spam link - 2010-03-03 21:17 ]

I've got a Flip HD cam and it's great. Very portable and nice and quick to use for those on the spur moments. Only 2 drawbacks to use when away from home on vacation; The zoom isn't fantastic and there is only 2 hours recording time, after which you would need to upload the movies to free up the camera memory.

But personally I got one a month ago and I use it a lot. My favourite current gadget.

[ Edited by: Kon-Hemsby 2010-02-18 12:14 ]

A lot of it depends on what you want to do with the footage afterwards. If you are looking at posting the clips up on YouTube/Facebook to share with friends and family, then the FLIP is a great option as they come with basic editing software and includes a really easy upload workflow for sharing the clips. This works best if you are the type that likes to look at individual clips of special moments and not as concerned about combining them together in a long form presentation.

If you are planning on getting more elaborate with the footage, like adding titles, music via an editing program like Premiere or Final Cut, then I would definitely go with one of the miniDV or even HDV camcorders. The overall quality is much better than with a FLIP camera and will give you the most flexibility. The down side is they aren't as convenient to bring everywhere while a FLIP will literally fit in your pocket. I bought a Canon GL-1 MiniDV camera about 10 years ago and use it to this day. I've always had good luck with Canon products as well as Sony.

I've gone both routes (FLIP vs MiniDV) and found that I'm more likely to "repeat-view" the videos that I edited together with music and titles rather than short clips.

I do video production for a living and I agree with TikTonga. The one advantage of the Flip type camcorders is that they are so small and convenient that one tends to use them a lot more. I carry one everywhere I go. So why am I suggesting you give it a pass?
The downsides are plenty.
They typically have poor (plastic) optics.
Low light performance is usually dreadful.
Most don't have manual focus controls.
The zooms are usually awkward and are often "digital" zooms (which means they're just magnifying the image further reducing quality).
Most don't have external mic or headphone ports (resulting in poor audio) or a shoe mount for useful accessories like lights.
Each time you press the start button a new file is created which can be an issue depending on how involved you plan to be involved in editing this so that it's watchable afterwards: no just running a cable to a TV and watching the day's shooting. You have to play each file by one by one. Most people are not willing to invest dozens of hours to edit something to make it watchable. (I'm one of those weirdos that is.)

You can spend in the $600-$1500 range and overcome many of the limitations above but you're still stuck with the many files situation.

If you do go the solid state recording direction I recommend you check out this model; Aiptek Action HD GVS. Comes with a remote, mini tripod, cables and has both mic and headphone ports.

Taking everything you've revealed into consideration, a DV or HDV camcorder might fit your situation better.

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