Edit: Nevermind, I went ahead and bought one 
I haven't used a video camera since 2008, which was at school and we used 1500 dollar camcorders and 6000 dollar professional video cameras. I can't quite afford that, as I'm just looking for something so that I can build up a portfolio before transferring into film school. I have a lot of old short films and such from high school, but I definitely need to start taking some new footage. I'm willing to spend up to $500. I've been looking at camcorderinfo.com and they seem pretty reliable. Is just going by their top ratings a safe bet? They have several cameras ranked in the top 15 out of all cameras that are within my budget. Anyone have good experiences with a certain camera or know of a particularly slammin' deal right now? I think I'd prefer HDD/Flash memory as opposed to DV. I suppose DVD would be ok, as well, but you don't see many mid-range camcorders with DVD. Thanks in advance CAGs!
Serious pros:
-HD (it is 2010...)
-of course great picture quality
-Manual focus
-Backlight settings
-ISO settings
I haven't used a video camera since 2008, which was at school and we used 1500 dollar camcorders and 6000 dollar professional video cameras. I can't quite afford that, as I'm just looking for something so that I can build up a portfolio before transferring into film school. I have a lot of old short films and such from high school, but I definitely need to start taking some new footage. I'm willing to spend up to $500. I've been looking at camcorderinfo.com and they seem pretty reliable. Is just going by their top ratings a safe bet? They have several cameras ranked in the top 15 out of all cameras that are within my budget. Anyone have good experiences with a certain camera or know of a particularly slammin' deal right now? I think I'd prefer HDD/Flash memory as opposed to DV. I suppose DVD would be ok, as well, but you don't see many mid-range camcorders with DVD. Thanks in advance CAGs!
Serious pros:
-HD (it is 2010...)
-of course great picture quality
-Manual focus
-Backlight settings
-ISO settings
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