Top five clever camcorders

You don’t need to be an expert cameraman to make great movies. There’s technology to take the strain out of even the simplest home movie. We’ve pulled together five of the cleverest camcorders around.

Have a peep, and see why the next camcorder you buy could be smarter than you are.

Say cheese, you’re on smile-o-vision
Point a camera in anyone’s face and they’ll either gurn like a buffoon or turn into a timid wreck. Either reaction has the potential to ruin your snaps and home videos. But not with this clever clogs camcorder from Sony. The new HDR-CX11E Handycam will not only shoot high definition video, but also instantly capture 10-megapixel snaps of your mates the moment they flash a smile, even while its recording video. Toothy grins will have no escape.

A Waterproof wonder
This snazzy Sanyo Xacti CA8 camcorder is just the thing for your very own Jaws remake. It’s waterproof up to 1.5m making it the ideal snorkel or scuba companion, and it shoots still piccies in eight megapixels. Its trump card is the ‘Face Chaser’ function for keeping track of your subject’s underwater mugs, and with direct YouTube upload you’ll get them on the net in seconds.

JVC’s fame-maker!
Don’t confine your amateur vids to a lonely telly at home. Share them with the world with JVC’s GZ-MS100 camcorder. Press its ‘upload’ button while recording and it instantly makes your videos YouTube compatible. The right settings are automatically chosen, and it’ll keep clips at the right length and file size too. It’s perfect for capturing z-listers doing the drunken shuffle at three in the morning and sending the moneymaking video to your fave’ red top. Either that, or making your mates internet famous in seconds.

Storage saviour
Canon’s latest camcorders, the HG20 and HG21, have enough storage to shoot in full 1080 HD as long as the night, and more. While the HG20 packs 60GB, the HG21 boasts 120GB for 45 hours of moving images. It also conceals an SD card slot so you can add even more storage. You might still need to find a plug socket to re-charge those batteries though.

Never miss a thing
Forget missing the crucial moment on film because you were slow to the red button. With Panasonic’s HDC-SD100 it’ll never happen again, thanks to its unique Pre-Recording Function. When you’ve got it switched on, it’ll continually record the last three seconds into its memory, so when you press record you’ll have a snippet of time before you pressed the button stored safely, letting you capture that special moment even if you missed it.

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