I mentioned a while back that I was looking for a video camera so I could post video blog entries. Well, after much digging around on the web, and with some useful input by wineanorak readers, I’ve purchased one. I didn’t want to spend a fortune: I set my budget at a relatively miserly £300 or thereabouts. The newest cameras are high-definition and start at around £500 and aren’t an option, so I’m just considering standard-definition camcorders. For that money what you get largely depends on the format you choose.

HDD is the most expensive, and you get least for your money. These are cameras that record compressed video (usually MPEG2 format) onto a hard disk. They’re convenient, and will probably be the future of video cameras, but for £300 you can only get an entry level one, with say 30 Gb of disk space. The sensors are usually a bit small and the resulting video quality suffers. DVD camcorders are the next most expensive: they record compressed video (MPEG2) directly onto DVDs, which is convenient for most users who shoot their footage and next can play it back through their DVD players. £300 gets you a bit more spec with a DVD camera than you’d get with an HDD model, but not a whole lot more.

The third format is mini DV, which involves recording uncompressed video to small tapes. that is a bit more fiddly, but you get much better quality at the equivalent price points to the other two formats. It plus means you have more editing options. The geeky choice. The model I chose was the Panasonic NV-GS320, which has three CCD sensors and a good lens. I’ve tried it out and have been impressed with the results. It was quite a bit less than £300 from ebuyer.com, but you could have spent quite a bit more

whether you had gone elsewhere.

I guess that is the contemporary way we purchase many items: by doing our own research on the Web and thereupon hunting around for the best price. But is it the most satisfying or the most effective? I don’t think so. It leads to the death of shopkeeping. In these days of price comparison, we hunt around to save £5, £10 or £15 on a £200 item, and are delighted when we get the best deal. But that £5, £10 or £15 was the margin that allowed good shops to employ competent, friendly staff who knew their stuff and could help you compose the right decision. Wouldn’t it be more satisfying and a better use of my duration whether I could have gone along to a retailer, chatted with someone about my requirements and next have chosen one of a range of options suggested to me? How much day have I spent digging for knowledge, much of which I don’t have the context to process properly.

Look at wine. Wine-searcher is a great tool, but use it for locating hard-to-find wines. Don’t use it at the expense of your local, knowledgeable merchant (if you have one) who can hand sell you interesting wines that you’ll find rewarding. And whether you see someone selling a specific wine for £5 less than your merchant has it on the shelves, don’t assume that your merchant is ripping you off. Bricks-and-mortar wine shops have their place, just as internet-only merchants do. You often pay a premium at a wine store where you can wander in, have a chat, get some advice and forge some sort of relationship considering they are adding value to the wine buying experience. When you see wines being offered more cheaply by Web or mail-order merchants, bear that in mind.