First off I hope it's okay that I'm posting this here...It's the only forum regarding any type of video info that I read (I don't post much, but I read a lot).

Anyway, I am in the market for a MiniDV cam...Sounds easy enough...Well, I'm on a limited budget for now. The max I can spend is $400-$500 (the cheaper the better). I know this is deffinatly on the cheap side of these cameras so that makes it really hard for me to decide because there are a lot in this price range. Unfortunatly there is a fine line between a crap camera and a good one.

Basically I am looking for the best I can get for the money...I want to find something without all of the bells and whistles. Transitions, and features like that mean nothing to me, and the only thing that matters is the important stuff like the Zoom, Picture Quality, and Firewire capability (which most seem to have I guess). I also like the feature of being able to go frame by frame right on the camera...not sure if this is common or not because I know pretty much nothing about this stuff.

If somebody could give me some suggestions I would really appreciate it...I understand that I'm not going to get the best at anything because of my limited budget, but I hope I can get something decent.

Thank you for reading.

-Josh