sdcardA. Personally, I think flash card storage is the better option these days.

Disc-based cameras are typically only available for standard-definition (SD) using 720×576-pixels (PAL) or 720×480-pixels (NTSC) video so they’re not an option. (They’re also not that common any more either.)

Hard drive cameras give you plenty of storage these days – upwards of 120GB. The problem though is that once the hard drive is full, you have to do something with the video before you can capture more. If you’re on holidays, that’s not easy but somehow you have to copy off video and store it on something else so it’s hardly a convenient option.

MiniDV tapes aren’t a bad option for capturing and storage – they’re easy to replace when you’re on the go and they store easily at home. The problem though is transferring the video to your computer. Tape-based cameras invariably use Firewire connections to transfer the video in real-time so that means 60-minutes of video will take 60 minutes to transfer. So it’s not a bad option when on holidays but a bit of a pain when you get home.

HD cameras with flash memory card options I think are ideal – you can quickly replace cards when you’re on holidays and you can load them into a USB card reader when you get home and transfer the video to your PC much faster than tape. The cards cost a bit more but they’re reusable and the cost is dropping considerably each year in terms of cost per gigabyte (GB).

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