i am no video buff and know very little about camcorders. i do have a buddy who is a video buff and he loaned me his sony something with the 3CCD thingy... the image quality was better but the darn image kept jumpy due to the weight of the camera. i noticed some smaller cameras with the 3CCD feature, is this something one should consider paying a bit more for?

thanks for your time.

Depends on what you are going to use it for.

The least expensive consumer level 3CCD cameras (Panasonics) get good reviews but compared against a consumer level HDV camera like like the Canon HV20, it's hard to tell the difference. The less expensive 3CCD cameras also use very small chips, 1/4 versus prosumer cameras that use 1/3.

So it depends on what your want it for.

When I was looking into camcorders a couple of years ago I had no sense of direction. I came across this site and it provided me w wealth of information that enabled me to make a decision in regards to my first purchase. 3cccd (http://www.pana3ccduser.com/)

In the end I bought a gs400, which is now no longer made but I wouldn't trade it for the world unless I was going to DVR.

Hope this helps...

When I was looking into camcorders a couple of years ago I had no sense of direction. I came across this site and it provided me w wealth of information that enabled me to make a decision in regards to my first purchase. 3ccd (http://www.pana3ccduser.com/)

In the end I bought a gs400, which is now no longer made but I wouldn't trade it for the world unless I was going to DVR.

Hope this helps...I had a GS400 (it's still lying around somewhere actually!) but my Sony HC5 is better quality, I film everything in HD and only downscale for those in my family without Blu-ray and only have DVD. It's not a massive difference, but I do think HDV is better (1 CMOS chip as opposed to 3CCD)