CANON
I currently have a Canon Digital Rebel still camera as well as an older Mini-DV video camera that works very well. One thing I will caution folks on is the digital HardDrive/Memory/CD type video cameras do not give as high of quality as the Mini-DV cameras... Many of these cameras use a type of digital interpolation for the picture and this does not provide the same quality as a good-quality MiniDV camera... (I bought a MiniDV because of this very issue.) It is the same kind of issue as when a camera says 20x Zoom optical and 800x digital. Pros will tell you to never use the digital zoom because the quality goes to Hell. So really the only meaningful stat is the OPTICAL Zoom. It seems strange that a tape based camera would provide better quality but it is true... There are some very high-end Hard drive cameras that provide the same quality but they are EXTREMELY expensive. Bang for the buck in my opinion is a good Canon Mini-DV camera as it is digital and can be easily manipulated with current software such as Premiere, Premiere Elements, Final Cut, etc... (I know these all work as I have used this camera with ALL of them)
