Canon FS10

Well, we went ahead and bought a camera today.  Thanks for those who offered tips.  We settled on the Canon FS10.

Here were the major decision points:

- We didn’t want to spend more than $500
- Flash memory has no moving parts
- 8GB of storage is 2.5 hours at normal quality - enough for our purposes
- Expansion SD/SDHC Memory Card
- Canon has an excellent legacy for great picture quality
- MPEG format a pain to edit, but we don’t plan to do a lot of editing
- Expansion stereo mic
- Good reviews for this camera

Our purpose is to use the camera for some work/school stuff, kid stuff, and maybe some political stuff.  This should work fine. 

On a side note, this purchase reminded me of how difficult the consumer electronics business must be.  We did our homework and narrowed it down to a couple of brands and required feature set.  Then I headed out to the stores to check out the cameras in real living color.  I went to Sears and settled on this camera.  It was listed at $499.  I called Wendy and she hit the internet and found the same camera with two-day delivery for about $50 less.  We bought it online.  Sears has a “guaranteed lowest price” guarantee, but given that I stood there for half an hour and nobody ever came over to help me, I didn’t want to spend the time to track someone down and bargain. 

We can’t wait to get our new camera!