I already have a hero 2 and 3, and they're great for what they are but I'm looking for something a little more functional. I want a good zoom with great image stabilization. Good quality indoors and low light. A good viewfinder/LCD to be able to pan following a subject. I'd like good sound, touch screen could be handy, and weatherproofing would be a plus but certainly not essential.

I seem to see the canon vixia and Panasonic hc series in a lot of best lists, but I was wondering if Texags had any opinions.

Budget is variable, but definitely under $1000, so most "professional" type cameras are out. Bang for buck is more important. I don't want to pay $800 for a camera with a couple extra gimmicky features when the $200 camera would take nearly as good of video.

Thanks

I got one of the Sony's with mechanical image stabilization, i.e. a "floating lens", a couple of years ago. The quality is great and silky smooth.

Thanks, rynning. I had initially shied away from Sony, because I got "Appled" by them back in the late 90's-early 00's. I got pretty invested into their stuff, and then had trouble transitioning due to proprietary media/file formats/etc. I assume this isn't an issue any longer?

Does everybody else just take cell phone video? No other opinions?

Sony camcorders are very good. There is nothing proprietary about them any more.

No need to spend lots of money. But a dedicated camcorder with IS will outshoot a camera in most cases. I laugh when I see someone holding up their iPad to shoot video of their kid playing sports.

I'll add that you should only pay attention to optical zoom. Run away from "digital zoom" and other gimmicky b.s. like that.