I'm a psychotherapist who needs to install a digital camcorder in my office to film my sessions. The room is small (maybe 8x8), so I need a camera which has a wide angle lens, is fine in office lighting (ceiling fluorescent),can hold at least 60 minutes of recording, and has a very sensitive mike or can have an extra mike used with it (I speak softly and so do my patients). Also, I have limited funds, although I am more concerned about quality than cost at this point. Any suggestions???
Hello MaryK,
Looking at your requirements, just about any camcorder with a microphone input will suffice. I'd recommed having a desk or table mic near the patient for the best audio results.
If I could make some recommendations, I'd say to get a digital camcorder that can transfer video to a PC. I imagine you'll want to keep these videos for a long time, so archiving them in digital format on a PC will save you hundreds to thousands on tapes over the long haul. This way you can back them up to a hard drive, then save the files in a compressed format, and burn them to a DVD for achive.
Doing some preliminary research, many of the "low-end" models didn't have a mic input, but I didn't check everything. Just visiting a store will help you find some. If they don't make them anymore, you can always consider setting up your PC with video capture capabilities, or setting up a basic camcorder and external mic to a video mixer connected to a DVD recorder. Really, there are tons of ways to do it. It just depends what kind of gear is available and how much you want to spend.
I hope this gives you a head start. If there are any community members with some recommendations, I'm sure MaryK would love to hear them.