If you’re new to videography, you should know that salespeople begin by assessing your knowledge, and then choose camcorders for you based on that assessment.  There are a number of features that look great in the store, but that you may not use (or be sorry that you did) after you bring the camcorder home.

In-camera Effects

Novices are often impressed by demonstrations of special effects built right into the camera.  They have probably seen many of these effects on TV, and few of them in home videos.  For example, you might use an old-timey, scratchy film effect, or a negative effect that you’ve seen in scary movies. Flip a switch and look like a professional, right?  The problem is that when you apply such an effect in the camera, you’re stuck with it.  Most special effects become tiresome very quickly, and you have no way to undo them once you’ve committed them to your video source material.  Virtually all such effects are available in inexpensive editing programs, where you can try them out, do and undo until you’re sure you can live with the results.  When you’re editing in software, selective addition of effects is much easier to than when you’re filming.

Digital Zoom

Zoom control is a very valuable asset in any kind of camera or camcorder.  Although amateurs often over-use the zoom control, the ability to achieve a high-quality zoom can be very valuable.  You might begin, for example, with a wide-angle shot to establish the setting, and then zoom in on the action.  In other situations, you might do the reverse.  You can also use a high quality zoom to flatten or add to the perception of the third dimension of depth. Modern camcorders usually offer two kinds of zoom – digital zoom and optical zoom -- and it’s important that you know the difference when you’re deciding what to buy.  Optical zoom is the more expensive kind, because it requires changing the focal length of the lens mechanically, and the lens must be of high quality to work equally well with different focal lengths. Optical zoom is a kind of in-camera effect.  It makes distant objects seem closer simply by digitally increasing the size of the individual pixels that make up a digital image.  With that comes loss of image clarity and resolution.  Although there may be an occasional opportunity to use such an effect, as with other in-camera effects, this can be better controlled with editing software.

Image Stabilization

Image stabilization – the ability of a camcorder to detect and compensate for unsteadiness -- can be a very nice feature, but only if it is well-implemented.  If you’re buying an inexpensive camcorder, spend some time reading up on other users’ experiences with this feature with the particular model you’re buying.  As with zoom, the camcorder may achieve a stable image either mechanically or digitally.  It used to be that optical stabilization, which essentially ‘floats’ the lens to offset camera instability, was the preferred method.  Newer digital implementations may be as good or better than some optical implementations, so it’s good to do some research, if this is important to you. However, if you want rock-solid shots, it’s best to avoid hand-held use of the camcorder as much as possible.  Make sure you buy a camcorder with a standard quarter-inch tripod mount on the bottom. You can purchase inexpensive tripods that give you stability, even through pans and zooms.  You can buy monopods even more cheaply – single-legged devices that might collapse to the size of a short umbrella – to take with you on walks.  You can buy or make your own stabilization devices that are even smaller and cheaper, with a little bit of adept Googling.