How to Find the Best Camcorder for Filming Outdoors

For filming your outdoor adventures, you’re going to want to look for a particular type of camera: compact, portable, and durable. Follow these steps to find the best camcorder for filming outdoors.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. For filming your outdoor adventures, you’re going to want to look for a particular type of camera: compact, portable, and durable. Follow these steps to find the best camcorder for filming outdoors.

2. Get good zoom. Don’t be fooled by outrageous digital zoom ratings (400x and up!) What matters is optical zoom. For clear, unpixelated far shots you should find a camera with decent optical zoom (about 10x is about average for a compact camera.)

3. Buy a longlife battery. You aren’t going to find a lot of AC outlets in the great outdoors. Buy an extra battery and keep it charged up.

4. Make sure the camcorder works well in lowlight. Check the lux rating, it will tell you how much light is needed to operate—lower is better. Also, a larger CCD is best.

5. Make sure you can see the LCD screen in daylight. Some screens are easy to see in a dimly lit electronics store but completely wash out in the bright sun.

6. Get a front-mounted microphone. One with zoom if possible. Otherwise, the voice of the person behind the camera is going to drown everything else out.

7. Read reviews. Do some research. Poke around on the internet and read some user reviews to find how comparable models stack up.

8. Create a short list. Make a list of the features and performance you want and bring it with you when you go shopping.

Tips & Warnings

• Features like “sports mode” or “night vision” may come in handy, but the bottom-line is the ease-of-use and picture quality.
• When filming outdoors, you’ll want to be able to turn off the LCD screen and use the viewfinder to conserve battery.
• Remember to take your camcorder for a test spin! Try using it in as many diverse locations as possible before buying.
• Take specifications and trumped up ratings with a grain of salt—especially with lux and zoom. Some manufacturers are a bit wily when getting their numbers.