On Fri, 20 Apr 2001 15:50:16 GMT, Michael Sigmon wrote:

>I am going to be doing some hiking and shooting this summer in the Swiss
>Alps. I am looking for a really good, but portable, camcorder in the
>miniDV format.
>
>I would welcome any and all suggestions for the best miniDV camcorder
>which strikes the right tradeoff between portability and features/image
>quality.
>
>Thanks in advance

Several are reviewed at
www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/camcorder-comparison.htm
If you are shooting landscape (a reasonable assumption,
I would guess...;-) on video, you are asking for what would
have been impossible only a few years ago: a portable
camcorder with good enough resolution to make shooting
landscape practical (landscape work is THE most difficult
type of subject matter to shoot successfully with video...).
Fortunately, there are two possible good solutions and
a couple of others that may be acceptable: the VX-2000
would be the first choice for image resolution (I have
shot much landscape work with one successfully - it can
show just enough detail to make this satisfying); the
TRV-900 is smaller and lighter, and good enough; the
VX-1000 and EZ30U (dv950) are also acceptable for
landscape work. The very sharpest one-chippers
(PC100/110/TRV20) may be barely adequate, if you are
not very critical of the results - and these are very
small and light. Other possibilities on the market now
are either not sharp enough to do what you want, or
are too big and heavy for practicality.