Camcorders

Camcorders are for long recordings - conferences, training sessions, church and event coverage, lectures - where a stills camera would overheat, stop at a file limit, or run out of battery halfway through.

That endurance is the reason to choose one, along with the things built around it: a long zoom in one body, continuous autofocus that behaves during a two-hour session, external power, and a microphone input. Stills cameras shoot better-looking video and are worse at doing it for three hours.

Audio is more than half of what makes recorded speech usable, and the built-in microphone will pick up the room, the air conditioning and the operator's breathing in preference to the speaker. Plan on a feed from the sound desk or a separate microphone near the speaker; it is the single largest improvement available.

Recording to two cards at once is worth looking for on anything that cannot be repeated. A wedding, a graduation or a board meeting has no second take, and cards do fail.

Tripod, spare batteries, mains adapter and enough card capacity for the longest session are quoted with the body - not as an upsell, but because a camcorder without them cannot do the job it was bought for.