Kyle

The HV30 is definitely great for getting that film look without too much work because of the HD. Tapes are great for quality and preservation, but can get really expensive really fast for documentary; I recently wrote up a budget that called for close to $400 in tapes, perhaps even more, for just one part of the shoot. If you get more advanced than point-and-shoot with some manual focusing, you may want to get something that isn't HD (like a Canon ZR950) and then save up for a professional camera, since the HV30 is still very automatic when it comes to exposures and such. I'm kind of wishing I'd done that, but the almost effortless picture quality makes up for it most of the time. Definitely get an external mic or flash recorder as the internal mic is not that great if there's any background sound.