Digital video cameras??
 

So, my expensive waterproof camera ended up getting stepped on, and said person offered to buy me a new camera. Ive wanted a digital video camera for sometime now, because thats mostly what i did with the photo camera anyways. So im just looking on input for some positives and negatives of brands and options, looking in the 300-400$ range. Are the cheaper internal hard drive models any good? or the ones that take mini DVDs? ive never owned a video camera so some help would be appreciated. And what am i looking out for features wise? Im also looking for something with a mic input...not sure if thats a pretty standard feature or not. Thanks everyone!

I'm sure this translates to video cameras as well as regular cameras so avoid DIGITAL zoom. Optical Zoom is what really counts.

+1 digital zoom sucks. Get a camera with the SDHC card in it. It makes life pretty easy to upload your videos to the computer and they are also pretty cheap in price.

don't buy the dvd ones b/c it takes forever to burn i have a jvc everio 60 gb which is awesome and works beautifully it just plugs right into the comp. and uploads in like 2 mins and goes directly to you tube if you want it to i highly recommend it. it also has a slot for the sdhc card if you need more storage then the 60 gigs it comes with lol