Camcorder Jargon - What You Need To Know!

Auto Exposure

Much more than just exposure, in effect auto exposure will take care of your shot completely, including depth of field shutter speed and aperture.

The CCD

The charge coupled device captures the video images storing them as thousands of pixels.

Digital Eight

The digital eight camcorder format allows recording onto 8mm or Hi8 tape. Many Digital8 camcorders also allow the playback of Hi8 and 8mm recordings even though they were recorded using an analog system.

Hi8

An analog format for camcorder offering, at the time, good performance for a tape-based machine.

Mini DVD

Recording pictures and sound onto small and very compact tape format, smaller than Hi8.

Night Vision Recording

Permitting camcorder shooting in very low light conditions - though often there is a very significant loss of colour in the image.

Resolution

As with digital cameras, the greater number of pixels the sharper the image.

Viewscreen

Modern camcorder's have a convenient and easy-to-use flip out screen, typically in colour. With large and easy-to-use images the quality of recordings is enhanced considerably over the past generation narrow box-squint.

White Balance

An automatic adjustment to assist the camcorder in keeping as true a colour as possible in the recorded image.

Zoom

Now offering astronomical levels of performance through digital zoom, which in fact electronically only magnifies the central portion of the optical lens image. However, at maximum zoom levels such as 100x, image degradation can be considerable.