Camera?

you talking still life cam?

yah

Do not get a Hard Drive Camcorder.  Stick with miniDV and HDV.

if that is all the guidelines you have, you have a lot of research to do.

Youre probably looking for a low end DSLR, like a canon digital rebel or a nikon d40.  Im in the same boat, but I might go a little higher, theres a lot mroe to it than "I want a camera"

rebel xt, rebel xti, d40, d40x, possibly even d80 
all sick choices and not too expensive

ive got a D50 im selling that is like mint, hit me up if you want pictures, i have to many to load in a thread.

HDV is miniDV (you can actually use miniDV tapes in a HDV camera I believe), just High Definition.  Hard Drive camcorders are a pain in the ass I have heard.  With miniDV or HDV you just get a firewire cable and upload the footage onto your computor.  If you don't have a firewire port on your computer I think they can be purchased.  Same goes with the cable.  GET miniDV!

you can get a canon 30d wiht a kit 18-55mm lense for 999, thats wat i got and its pretty much sweet. i love it

word. hdv is dope, i film hdv on minidv tapes

from my experience they are but thats just me. we used to have one in the class i was taking at school. i would try to upload the video to my computer and it would upload video and not sound. then when i uploaded to the mac at school it would play sound but no video. it was a pain in the ass.

i'd go mini dv.

i would just like to thank you for reading the reply above you before you spoke.

HDV is High Deff. miniDV....answer the question?

a pv-gs500 is what i use. its pretty damn sick. I got mine for i think like 700 idk but my brother knows. that is 3ccd which means 3 color sensors. it makes the quality better.

HDV is high definition. They have mad nice quality, are cheap. a good one is only like 500ish on ebay. they take up a lot of space but that really isnt a big issue.

Hard drive blows. my cousin had one and i hated it. they are expensive for not too good quality. they also create like new clips and stuff each time you hit record. its mad gay.

if you dont care about quality and want a really cheap one, just go to best buy, find one you like, then go home and buy it from an online store for like mad cheap.

online stores deff have the best deals by far. ive had good experiences buying from them but you never know when you come across a ripoff store. i like to use the site resellerratings.com just to make sure the site is a legit one

anyway i think what you want is prolly a cheap HDV or 3ccd camcorder. stay away from that hard drive shit

shit dude i hope i didnt just type that whole thing out and you want like a picture camera.... oh well whatever

I don't think there are any HDV cameras for $500, but I would get the Panasonic GS320 (miniDV)at Circuit City, save up for a Panasonic GS500 (miniDV and larger CCD's than the GS320 whcih means better colors), or save for a Canon HV20 (HDV).  If you buy online check the site on http://www.resellerratings.com to see if it is legit or not.  If it's too good to be true then it probably is.