When camcorders first launched decades ago the image quality was bad, the cameras were huge, and lots of tapes were needed to record anything. Today camcorders are very small, image quality is now often HD, and tapes are mostly a thing of the past.

Canon introduced three new camcorders that all record to internal storage in full 1080p HD resolution. The camcorders are all in the VIXIA line and record in 24Mbps bit rate in AVCHD format. Canon says that 24Mbps is the highest bit rate that can be used in the AVCHD format and makes for more detailed and smoother video recordings.

Since YouTube has become such a popular destination for users looking to post videos and those looking to view videos, camcorders aimed specifically at YouTube have started becoming more and more common. These camcorders store video digitally in formats compatible with YouTube.

The latest such camcorder is the Samsung SC-MX20. The camcorder uses H.264 compression to allow up to 4 hours of video to be stored on one 8GB SDHC card. The camera supports SD and SDHC cards up to 32GB.

Going on summer vacation is lots of fun, but for the gadget hound that likes to take their camcorder with them to the pool or beach it can be a bit unnerving with the risk of getting sand or water into your camcorder leading to the death of your gadget. If you want to film your snorkeling expedition with a normal camcorder you can forget it.

Panasonic has a new camcorder that can not only withstand rain or getting a drink spilled on it, but can actually record video underwater. The Panasonic SDR-SW20 can record video and still shots at 640 x 480 in up to 5-feet of water.