Wife's birthday is coming up and she wants a new camcorder.
Currently we use a Sony handycam that uses a hi-8 tape and has usb out.
We almost exclusively take video's of horses outside in mostly bright or sunny conditions. These are action shots of horses that are up for sale. They are being lunged or ridden doing walk, trot, canter etc. I typically use a tripod if I am doing the recording from a single vantage point but I also need to be able to hold the camera steady if I need to move around. (Must be of decent weight and have good image stabilization.)
Because I usually have the sun behind me the LCD panel needs to be easily viewable in bright sunlight or the viewfinder needs to be usable w/ glasses.
Shots are usually imported into windows movie maker and edited for posting to youtube BUT we also need the ability to generate a quality dvd for the neophytes or those people who want a higher resolution image. Currently we do everything in standard def but I can see that in the future we will need HD.
(You see our vids here:http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wahlrebe&aq=f)
It needs to be fairly easy to use for when hubby is not around. Budget is TIGHT so around $150 to $300 and it has to LAST.
We do take good care of our equipment but this is going to be used in a dusty arena.
Any help in pointing in the right direction or offering possible suggestions would be greatly appreciated. (I don't wanna screw this up...)