Hi Fred,

Yes it’s a pretty good camera with a 20x optical zoom it equates to around 600mm in stills camera terms. Not only that, the lens is removeable and with an adaptor you can attach Canon EOS lenses too, with a cropping factor of around 7x you’re looking a pretty good close ups.

I might take a look at you’re Rode mic sometime, I have a Sennheisser which you’re welcome to try, you might get better results.

As for HD, yes they’re pretty expensive, the HD version of my camera which looks just like mine but in an all black finish costs £4500 ! There are cheaper alternatives at around £2000 or less but although HD, they are pretty naff in every other respect, i.e just little handycams for general use. It’s probably best to get one that shoots a full 1080 lines interlaced, a full HD tv screen needs to have a resolution of 1920×1080 lines for full quality. Lot’s of the so called ‘HD ready’ screens on sale on the high street just scrape into HD minimum standard of around 720 lines !

Having said that, I’ve seen some of these plugged into a decent dispaly and the results are a big WOW !!!

renfrew

this sounds like some camcorder you have i must say by the looks of it do you need a crane to lift it it looks very big

and i bet it costs a pretty penny as well

do you not upload to flightlevel 350

regards

peter