first off i am brand new to this forum so sorry if this is in the wrong spot and all of that

i currently have a hitachi HDD/DVD camcorder it was abut $300 and i have come to the sad realization that it sucks and i want something better.

i want a more professional looking camera and something i wont have limits with.
my main use for it will be filming snowboarding. so i want good FPS for those slow mo shots and something kindof rugged to handle the cold weather.
also good night vision for night shoots.

and one of my biggest concerns is how it imports into the computer
i have a macbook pro and everything i shoot needs to be imported into it and edited in final cut express
so a firewire port usually works perfect and USB only sometimes works it depends on the camera

i am only 16 and i need this before next winter so my budget is around $1500

heres a few i have been looking at

cannon HV30 (because of the low price and good reviews)

Sony HDR FX7 (because it looks a lot more professional and more features)

i would much rather have one like the sony HDR but $1500 seems to be about the starting price for cameras like those. if thats the case the canon HV series cameras look pretty good

thanks in advance for all the help guys

If your interested i have a bunch of snowboard videos on youtube but since they wont let me out URLs in untill i have 3 posts
you can just type in wakebrdwnder30 to get my youtube page

they are all limited to 30fps(or 60i), unless you go with one of those new sanyos that records a real 60p... just remember that youtube will only display 30p, so you need to keep your distribution format in mind... you'd have to blend those 60p frames into 30p frames.

go over to dvinfo.com, or search this forum, and find some test video clips, so you can import 'em and see how the editing process goes, with avchd... because you are on a mac, the avchd will automatically get transcoded into another codec, and you'll need the entire file structure of the sd card to do that... macs can't handle just the .mts video files, unless you are using premiere pro.