As one of the modern world’s “must have” gadgets, camcorders have moved forward technically very rapidly over the last couple of decades, camcorders that have been considered small and sleek just 10 years ago, are now thought of as bulky and clumsy.

Along with a whole range of personal gadgets and household electronics such as mobile phones, PlayStation’s, dvd players and iPods, the modern camcorder has truly come of age over the past few years.

The latest variant of the camcorder world is the high-definition, or, HD Camcorder, which are now becoming the standard for small, easy to carry, simple to use, home movie recorders. Of course each of these cameras completes in a highly charged market and as such offer a wide array of functions and facilities aimed at tempting potential buyers.

Options such as, enhanced colour leveling, face detection, automatic and manual focusing, digital image stabilizer, optical zoom capability, high-quality video resolution and night mode recording, not to mention the ability to slip these petite but effective video recorders into your pocket have now become almost standard on nearly every model from a wide range of different companies.

One of the greatest advances has been the ever increasing resolution capabilities, quite simply the better the resolution more brilliant and sharper image is when it is played back either on the camcorder, or on the HDTV at home.

Optical zoom is another quality feature, which as the name suggests allows the user to zoom in and out without losing any quality. So for example, a 15 x optical zoom capability means that you can zoom in up to 15 times the regular range without losing any picture quality, which is ideal in all kinds of filming situations.

A relatively recent addition to camcorder features is face detection, by using this facility the camera is able to recognise a human face from other objects and is able to focus on the face and give the best possible exposure, as well as adjusting other settings automatically so that the face can be seen extremely clearly and in the best HD focus.

One of the problems for any amateur cameraman going back to super-8 days is the need to keep the camera steady when filming, especially when trying to move and film at the same time. But now with digital image stabilizer technology the shaking and jerking, as well as slipping in and out of focus is eliminated.

Not very long ago using a video camera in complete darkness was restricted to James Bond movies, now HD Camcorder’s are able to use former military technology in order to shoot videos in very poor lighting conditions, or even in total darkness. This is one aspect of the latest technology that really can vary between one product and another, so if this is something that is of interest to you it is important to check out just how high-quality the lightless recording is on any camcorder you are interested in.