You’ll get about two minutes of recorded video on the built-in flash RAM and about 75 minutes with the SD card. The camera works in regular light and automatically switches to night mode with the sun goes down. A ring of infra-red LEDs around the lens will illuminate your subject no matter the level of darkness.

It’s got a 2-inch LCD display on its back side and is powered by four double-A batteries. You hook it up via its USB connection. It’s got a trigger-type record button and a full set of display control buttons at the rear. Downside: a fixed focus lens.

Buy for $80 from Amazon

It shoots 1280×720 HD video at 30fps with an incredible three-and-a-half hours of battery life. It records video as MP4 files, so you can simply drag and drop the video files from the memory card to your PC or Mac.

The image quality is very good using its 30x optical zoom. It can shoot 2MP photos and captures JPEGs at 13fps. It’s got a pull-out 2.5-inch LCD display, but that may be a little difficult to use underwater.

Buy for $334 from Amazon

86,400 seconds. 1,440 minutes. 24 hours. A full day. That’s how long you can shoot high-definition video with the Canon Vixia HF S11 digital camcorder before having to unload footage from its 64 gigabyte, built-in flash memory.

Under most circumstances, you’ll probably not worry about running out of recording room on this HD handheld. You’ll also be able to record full HD video in your choice of a 24p Cinema or 30p Progressive modes.

Other nice features: captures 8-megapixel still images, has face detection, re-charges its battery in about 10 minutes per half hour of battery life, a quick and accurate focusing system, and an optical stabilizer.

A reviewer for a video magazine I recently spoke with told me he was impressed with this HD camcorder. For him the video performance and quality were top-notch at both its maximum 24-megabit-per-second bit rate and 17Mbps.

Buy for $1367 from Amazon

Now there’s the Flip MinoHD 2nd Generation camcorder with eight gigabytes of capacity (versus 4GB) and a bigger two-inch LCD display (up from 1.5 inches). The double RAM capacity gives users now two hours of 720p (1280×720) video.

In addition to its signature, flip-out USB plug, it also now comes with an HDMI connection (despite them being cheap and not including at least one, short, HDMI cable). Also new: a “Magic Movie” software mode that “automatically trims and arranges a user’s selected video content into their own movie.”

So compared to the Apple’s iPod nano the new Flip Mino HD v2 is more expensive ($50 more), but does have HD video where the nano doesn’t. On the ‘flip’ side, it doesn’t play music or have an FM radio or have the looks of the nano.

It all comes down to the features you want in your pocket. That’s something you should do in the privacy of your own home.

Buy for $229 from Amazon

It’s time to shoot like a pro. The Panasonic HDC-TM300 is a full high-definition camcorder that records to Flash memory or an SD card. It’s a camcorder with pro features that the entire family can use.

It’s got a newly-developed 3MOS system that previously was only available in Panasonic’s higher priced models. It packs three full HD sensors to process red, green and blue color elements individually so video comes out more vibrant, yet natural, even in low light situations.

The video quality is superb…1,920×1,080-pixel resolution at 30 frames per second at 17 megabits per second. Don’t worry about storage. You can record about eight minutes of video per gigabyte, or approximately four hours of video in the internal memory.

It features a 2.7-inch touchscreen, 32 gigabytes of internal Flash memory and a SD card slot, takes still images at 10.6 megapixels, has a time lapse recording mode at one second up to two minutes, a pre-record function of up to three seconds before the ‘record’ button is pressed, plus a manual control and intelligent auto mode.

Buy for $1177 from Amazon

Calling the Red One a video camera is like calling the Desert Eagle .50 a handgun: it just doesn’t do it justice.

But instead of shooting bullets that could blow someone’s head off, the Red One shoots video that could blow your pants off. Consider that it can capture 2K video (that’s 1080p to us laymen) at 120 frames per second, or 4x conventional playback speed. It can also capture 4K video at 30 fps, which is twice the resolution of 1080p. Betcha didn’t know that even existed!

Bottom line: for anyone really serious about video, the Red One is the camera to have. It weighs 10 pounds, is built like a tank, and starts at $17,000—although options can push it way past the price of new Honda Accord.

Want to see what it can do? Check out this skate video. Never before have kickflips been captured in such detail.

The Zi6 is sure to make a huge splash when it hits store shelves in October, for two reasons:

1. It captures video at 720p and 60 frames per second. Yes, it’s a real HD quality video camera that truly fits in your pocket (dimensions are 2.5 × 4.5 × 0.9 in.) unlike the Canon TX1 that “fits” in your pocket, but is a little bulky, to be honest (though we’re pretty sure it takes slightly better quality photos than the Zi6 will).

2. It only costs $179.99. That’s right… well under $200 for an HD quality video camera. You really can’t beat that.

PC users will get some software from Kodak that will let them edit and upload their video direct to Youtube, while Mac users will love that the video comes is captured in standard h.264 video format, meaning you can just dump it into iMovie, and away you go. It’ll also take still photos, so you don’t have to carry three camera’s with you just to capture all your shots and video.

It also supports up to 32GB SDHC memory cards, meaning you can expand it to capture hours of video, versus the lower time limits on the all-in-one Flip or Vado.

The Kodak Zi6 is powered by “AA” batteries, so you should never run out of power, and it comes with two rechargable AA’s and a wall charger. If you find yourself out of power, just grab two more Duracell AA batteries at a local store, and you’re back in business.

I can’t wait for this thing to hit the shelves.

Pre-order it on Amazon.com for $179.99 right now, and be one of the first to own it when it ships.

Oh, and pick up some big SDHC memory cards while you’re at it:

Try a 32GB SDHC memory card from PNY for around $130 or get these excellent 16GB SDHC memory cards from Transcend for around $60

(And yes, the HC part of the SDHC designation is important. It’s what makes the cards work for video at these large sizes… they’re faster than standard SD memory cards, so keep that in mind if you’re shopping at Fry’s or something and think you see a ‘good deal’.)

Such is the case with the Flip Video Camcorder, which took the low-end market by storm earlier this year with its tiny size, mediocre video quality, and affordable price. The Flip sells for $99 in its most basic 512MB configuration with a low-res LCD and goes up to $149 for the Ultra model that can store up to 60 minutes of video and has a higher resolution screen.

Today, Creative launched the Vado Pocket Video Cam. The Vado sports similar features to the Flip, including a four letter name. Other specs:

• 2GB of internal memory
• 640×480 video capture (30 fps)
• 2x digital zoom
• up to 120 minutes of video capture (60 minutes on “excellent” quality)
• 2-inch LCD (640×240 resolution)
• 130 minutes of battery life
• built-in USB plug

All in all, the Vado is solid knock-off of the Flip, exceeding some of the Flip’s features for a lower price: just $99. Unlike the Flip, the Vado is available in only two colors (Silver and Pink) and uses a built-in rechargeable battery instead of AA’s.

This camera is the ultimate hand-held pocket sized camera, not only because it takes awesome photos, but because it also shoots HD quality video and is the smallest form-factor camera to do so.

If you need a good on-the-go camera that you can keep on you all the time, but want something with better than VGA quality video, you should definitely check this out. We’ve owned this camera for three months now, and we really really love it.

We use it all the time: to take photos of the kids, or quick videos of them running in circles (both of our boys are under 5 and are hilarious sometimes), and we’ve taken it with us on many trips so we can take quick snapshots of where we’ve been.

Canon got it right with this camera. It lives up to the Canon name with it’s fantastic image and video quality, and blows everything else out of the water with it’s ability to shoot in HD.

For $355.00 you can’t go wrong with a Canon PowerShot TX1 7.1MP Digital Camera