8 part series
By Lorraine Grula
Internet Video Gal

CAMCORDER BASICS
PART 4
USEFUL CAMCORDER FEATURES – YOUR LCD SCREEN

Today’s video camcorders have bells and whistles that make video junkies like me drool.  Seriously. 

Technological advancements make top-quality virtually guaranteed.  Today’s video camcorders are tiny marvels that get good video even in difficult situations.

Virtually all consumer model camcorders come with a pull-out, color LCD screen as well as a black and white viewfinder.  You can use either one but not both at the same time.  (You don’t need to.) 

Although the LCD screen can be hard to see in extremely bright light, I sure love them in other situations.  

LCD Size and Resolution are the two aspects of this feature to look for when buying a camera. 

Now bear in mind that the quality of your LCD matters to the camera operator while shooting, but doesn’t affect final video quality.  The quality of the recorded image is different than the quality of the image in your viewfinder.  Having a quality image in your viewfinder makes shooting easier and therefore you’re better to get quality shots and have more fun, but the recoding mechanism is different.     

LCD Size refers to the size of the screen that folds out on the left side of most camcorders.  It’s used for a viewfinder and for reading menus, so bigger is better.  If you play your video back in the camera, you can watch it on this LCD, which is a somewhat like a tiny plasma TV.   

LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Display, the current technology used for such displays.  They’re soft to the touch and work well but are hard to see in bright light. 

No doubt a larger LCD screen is easier to see.  You also want to look at how many pixels are used for the display as this determines how sharp, and how much detail you will see on the screen.   Really fancy ones have individual brightness, contrast and color controls that are usually found via the menu. 

So for both LCD size and number of pixels on the screen, higher is better.

Camcorders with the largest highest resolution LCD screens include the Sony DVD505, Sony HDR-SR1, and the Sony HDR-UX1 all with a 3.5 inch (high resolution) screen.

Related posts:

1. VIDEO CAMCORDER BASICS Part 2
2. VIDEO CAMCORDER BASICS Part 3
3. VIDEO CAMCORDER BASICS Part 1
4. How to Simplify Video Production Part 3
5. How to Simplify Video Production Part 4