Korean Job Discussion Forums

[yellowdove]

i want a video camera for my birthday, and my family back home is giving me $300 CDN to put towards it. i have a few questions though, hoping someone who has bought a video camera here can help me with.

a) where is the cheapest place to get a good one? one with some sort of HD capability, doesn't have to be full 1080, but 720 would be nice. i've been to home plus, and a couple electronic stores here (i'm in daejeon), so i have a clue about whats out there.

b) are they all 220v? do the video cameras convert to 110v for back home?

c) if you bought one here, are you happy with what you purchased? do you wish you had someone back home buy one for you and ship it, or are you satisfied with what you have? i know that the cameras are going to be the same no matter where you buy them from, but just your thoughts would be appreciated.

i don't want to spend a lot of money on something that i won't enjoy/be able to use back home.

thanks!

[Jbko]

Just do yourself a favor and do not buy Samsung. I do not have a good experience with that. Still Japan Sony!

[cmr]

I didn't go to Yongsan or Technomart, so I can't say if they would have had better deals, but I got mine throught the Internet. I know that I got a better deal than at Homeplus, though. Go to www.enuri.com it's a Korean site that compares prices among various Korean sites, such as Auction, Gmarket, Interpark, ... So, you being in Daejon makes no difference if you order through the Internet as it will be delivered to your home.

My camcorder takes both 110v and 220v. I think most probably do, just like laptops, but you'll need to buy an adapter for the plug. By the way, buy one in Korea before going back to Canada. Two years ago, we went to Canada for a few months and forgot the adapter at my parents for our laptop. Buying a new one at The Source was close to $10 with tax. In Korea, you can get the same thing for 500 won.

I'm happy with what I bought, but in Canada or the US they had a model with more memory than what was available here. To be fair, it was also cheaper than the model available in North America, but I would have preferred to pay a little more and get more internal memory. Although, I can always buy memory cards with the money I saved.

One thing I suggest you to do is to take time to take a look at the reviews you can find on the Internet. Just Google the name of the camcorder you are interested in and "reviews" or something like that... better safe than sorry.

Regarding what the previous poster wrote, I had a Samsung Hi-8 in the past and I was quite satisfied with it. I know (from the reviews I read) that in the past few years Samsung didn't make great HD camcorders except for one model last year that ranked very high and wasn't overpriced, so you should take time to read reviews before making your decision. Think about what is important to you, which functions will matter most. That's why I bought a Sony, because of a few things that were important to me, but other models had some functions that Sony didn't offer and I would have liked to have. Also, Sony camcorders still won't take common SD cards; one has to use Sony memory card format. That was a turn off but one has to compromise. At any rate, Sony is good, but overrated; not all their camcorders are great. Read reviews before making your decision.

[SuperHero]

I bought a Canon Vixia HG20 in November (here's a good English Review) and am very very happy with it. it does full 1080i HD and is very easy to use. Total cost was around 900,000 which was a little higher than prices in the U.S. after taking into account the exchange rate at that time.

I bought it online, or rather my wife did. I would also recommend getting a second battery. But don't buy the Canon ones as they cost a fortune. Get the White Cell BP 819 which will run about 38,000 roughly 1/3 the cost of the Canon battery.

Editing HD video takes a little bit of work. the files on the HG20 are m2ts or mts and will not open in windows movie maker - I did manage to get them to work on my laptop but not on my desktop. Anyhow I don't really like windows movie maker.

I am using Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 - if you are familiar with this it will be your best choice. CS3 doesn't support HD video so you'll have to get CS4. There are other consumer software options for editing HD video but I haven't tried them.

I am also dual booting linux and found that kdenlive edits HD video pretty good. It's a little more powerful than Windows Movie Maker and is rather intuitive to use as well. But it is a far cry from Adobe Premiere Pro.

Anyhow hope this helps you.