Low-light performance and handling are essential for night sports.
Watching sports on TV may be fun, but nothing beats the thrill of watching a game live at night and recording game highlights and watching it back home. Whether it's for improving your own sports ability or for just pure entertainment value, recording the best video necessitates the best-quality camcorder for night sports.
Canon Vixia HF S21
The Canon Vixia HF S21 is a prosumer (consumer product with professional features) camcorder that has a minimum illumination of 0.3 lux when filming in low-light mode; tests, however, indicate that required illumination is about 14 lux. A manual control dial controls manual focus, exposure compensation, aperture or shutter, mike level and the automatic gain control limit. This camcorder defaults at a low-quality setting (7 megabits per second at partial HD resolution), but users can adjust this unit to 17 megabits in full HD mode without playback issues. The electronic viewfinder (EVF), however, is considered to be coarse for manual focus.
Canon Vixia HF S200
The Canon Vixia HF S200 is another prosumer camcorder model that also offers a minimum illumination the same as that of the Vixia HF S21; you can expect that the required illumination may be higher with a similar value. It is packed with numerous features within a small footprint, such as an EVF and a touch screen. A common thing about Canon Vixia camcorders is that they default to the low-quality video modes and would irritate other users, as they would have to make adjustments prior to use. People who like filming a lot would also be bummed out by this camcorder's lack of SDXC support; however, this is compensated with two SD card slots. Potential filming problems can also stem from a short battery life, a problem that has the potential to cut off the crucial moments of any game.
JVC GZ-HM1
The JVC GZ-HM1, while not the easiest of camcorders to handle, offers a lot of desirable features that would suit filming night sports. This camcorder features back-illuminated sensor positioning for impressive low-light sensitivity and reduced noise. Filming lengthy videos is not much of an issue for this unit, as it boasts of 64 GB of nonremovable flash memory along with an SD/SDHC memory card slot. It is also easy to steady and with the added stabilization system, it's ideal for capturing fast-paced action in sports played at night.
Panasonic HDC-TM300
The Panasonic HDC-TM300 is one of the cheaper best-quality camcorders for night sports. This camcorder possesses a low required illumination score of 8 to 9 lux, making it a very useful camcorder for capturing night sports activity. As night sports activity usually has a lot of movement, easy handling is needed and the HD-TM300 has a lens ring that can deliver comfortable and precise control. For beginners, the intelligent auto feature of this unit allows for fuss-free recording of any night sporting event.
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