I'm a Sony fan, and in that price range I have a TRV-950 (TRV-900 is pretty good too), I don't know if they make them anymore, but there's bound to be an equivalent to it out there. If you had the bank, I'd go for a VX, though in some situations it can be a little large and require some caution when following someone in a ditch, bowl, or snakerun-type obstacle course.
One thing I'd stay away from are the hard drive-based cameras... at least until they come up with a solid-state camera than can hold 40-100 gigs of footy. The reason being is that hard drives themselves don't hold out too well when they undergo vibrations over a long (or long-ish) period of time. I don't have first hand experience with the hdd cameras first hand, but I've seen computer hard drives die because they weren't protected form vibrations over extended periods of time (they weren't properly mounted or securely seated). I would imagine that the little hd's they have in them eventually would succumb to the jolting and skating vibrations after a while.
Topic: Best Video Camera (Read 1461 times)