you can get cheap ones on ebay as we did , old 8mm tape one or yoy can go digital and still get them at a reasonable price

if its for the boat i wouldnt spend too much as accidents happen and it would be a shit to get the expensive one wet

jmo

RUSS & SANDY

"A family that fishes together stays together"

There are some waterproof video cameras, and some are pretty compact too. I havent used any, but I think Till bought one?

As for HD, good to have if its in your pricepoint, but depends what you want it for. If it was just youtube, I doubt the increased resolution would matter much due to it being resized. HD would look better on the computer, or HD of course (but camera needs to be reasonable, otherwise its like buying a cheap reel with 20 bearings)

--------------

Always interested in someone to go fishing with

Na, not me.

Strictly vids Jay? My Panasonic Lumix TZ5 takes HD vids, unreal! up to 10mins at a time. I think it's pretty much one of the best compacts on the market and around $500. It also takes awesome pics. I will try and put some video footage together for you to look at. Just something to think about.

Cheers

"holy sh!t, did you see that?"

the olympus 1030sw underwater camera also does video at good quality as well , price around the $500 mark and waterproof to 10mtrs

RUSS & SANDY

"A family that fishes together stays together"

It depends on what you want to do with the final product.

if you want quality then go HD (3ccd preferably) on a HDD cam. Capturing images on phones and compact still cams is a joke unless you have some rare footage and thats all you have to record it with.

2k will get you started, look for: internal mic jack

                                               manual focus

                                               optical steady shot

Not sure of the Specs Jay, but Panasonic do a splash proof vid cam.

I did all the research and ended up with a Canon HV-20.  HV-30 is out now (under 1k).  This is a HD cam and it is fantastic - the picture output to a 50" HD Plasy is awesome.

Just sorting out a case and wide angle this week, which has an ouch factor of 3.5k.

I beleive that tape is better then Hard disk cams - quick change if on the road (don't need laptop). Good back up too.  HV-20 uses this.

If you go HD, you WILL need more computer space and an upgrade - HDMI connections etc.  There is no use getting HD cam, if you don't save it as HD.  HD is very hungry.  I got a 1TB added to system and need another soon.

When a blueray burner and disks are cheaper then can burn final output to that.  Otherwise it is stored on computer or copied back to tape.

Cheers Pete

I have a lot of experience with Video Cameras through work and personal.  Used to like Sony (there still good but the manual focus needs some work in my opinion)however after a lot of research ended up with the Cannon HV20 (hi def). 
Main features I would be after is a decent and easy to use manual focus particularly essential when shooting over water and auto focus often searches for focus when only water in view resulting in vid going in and out of focus at times.  This was my main bugbear with all cameras - would be nice to see a decent spot focus button like my old sony had where you push down - it spot focusses and you release the button and it holds that focus.

Other reason I went for the HV20 is it records to Hi def tape (and normal tape if you want though then you lose the high def) this means you always have the original hi def tape as an original recording.  I steered clear of hard drive vid cam as hard drives can and do fail at times and cameras particularly in boats takes lots of knocks and bumps etc.  last thing you want to do is get some special footage and lose it cause the hard drive stuffs up.  Workmates have had two hard drives go in last two years - does happen.

 Hard drives also fill up and as pete mentions if your on a big trip and haven't got a lappy to download it to your stuffed

I get my high def tapes from a specialist video supplier at about $4 each rather than the 20-30 bucks each they ask at normal stores.

Memory stick cams are good but these too fill up quickly and last time I looked the mem sticks were expensive.  Tape was the way to go for me.

Bottom line what ever you get make sure the manual focus is easy to use and over all is practical and reliable

The heading for my last post is a bit suggestive hey>>>>>

Thought I'd say something before anyone else did

Cheers

Take a look at the 'Making of Deadliest Catch' and check out the waterproofing camera rigs those guys made up... Would be cool to mount one of those bad boys on your boat!