Heya fellas. I'm lookin for advices on what best videocam I can get for around 3k budget. A friend of me needs one for his college assignment, and planning to buy one as a tool since his studies will use a lot of video footages.

Any video-cam sifus out there who can help?

i can only suggest jvc everio hdd cam for long term use.. models u can check at jvc website.. i think 3000 is a good budget already. i myself is using a jvc 30gb hdd cam and i found it easy to use as u get to monitor your captured moments scene by scene. and if u think dropping it would be fatal to the hard disk. trust me.. i've dropped it like numerous of times, and it happens to be no problem with the system.

never mind the plastic built, it is as robust as titanium (lol) perhaps lighter.

Well most HDD cams have built in accelerometers to detect sudden high acceleration (typically when free falling). It will usually de-activate the HDD and park its reading head to a safe place and brace for impact. This will reduce the chances of the reading head creating damage on the disk surface. That is if you drop it within the tolerable height which is around table level. Anything higher, anything goes...

But it is generally not recommended to drop it due to lens assembly and other precision components. Dropping it will usually bump off these high accurate components and you might be getting good performance later on.