Hi,

I am fairly new to filmmaking and need some advise to choose a camera for our reporting work (which we hope will become more popular).

We have a website and do short filmed reports once or twice a day about various topics. So far we have been using a very inexpensive camera but this is not working well for us.

We now have some budget to purchase a new camera that will be better and more flexible. This is a short description of what we need:

• It needs to give a good quality picture.
• We will use it for filming reports inside our building, Sometimes outside on location, and sometimes for interviews out on location as well.
• It needs to be lightweight
• Sometimes it needs to be mounted on a tripod
• We need to be able to connect an external Microphone (can you recommend a good boom microphone?
• The output will be put on a website, but we will also use the camcorder for dvd's
• The operator will not be experienced and will be learning as we go along.

The camcorders we are currently considering are the following:

• Sony HVR-V1E Camcorder
• Sony HVR-HD1000E Digital High Definition HDV PAL Camcorder
• Sony Professional HVR-A1U CMOS High Definition Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom

Which one would you recommend? Or is there another one that would be better?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Jo