I am a realtor. I am looking for a great camcorder for virtual tours. Do you have a recomendation ?

Most virtual tours that I have seen online are with Quicktime's VR which takes a series of still photographs to create one 360 degree shot that users can zoom in and out of.

This, I believe is a better way of doing a virtual tour than running video of each room. Users want to go at their own pace and having the ability to zoom in and out and navigate to different rooms on the fly is beneficial. With video, the cameraman would feel the need to fill with audio descriptions that may or may not be what the user is interested in.

So, my recommendation is to get a good digital SLR with a wide angle lens and learn to use Quicktime VR. Also, make sure you invest in a good lighting kit. Don't rely on ambient light or the lights that are in the house itself. Learning good 3 point lighting techniques will give you the advantages you want in professionally presenting your product. No matter what you end up using.

If you want to do real video, not some user-driven VR thing, then the wider the lens the better. Small camcorders usually have large zoom ratio, but so-so wide angle. I'd say any camcorder will do, but you will likely have to buy a wide-angle converter. On the other hand, depends on type of property, maybe you will need telephoto instead ;-) Oh, use tripod. Even better, hire a videographer who will do this for you.

I would guard against buying a wide angle or telephoto add on. You run into clarity issues and potential barrelling outside of the camera's normal focal range.

BTW what's your bias against "some user-driven VR thing," Ungermann?

Nothing against VR, but I think that some customers (dare I say, some wealthier customers) may want to watch a video on a big-screen TV instead of poking with keys on a computer. Maybe I am wrong, after all I am not a realtor.

I don't think that wealth really has anything to do with it. If you're in the market, you obviously can afford to buy. But the downside with video is that you kinda have to go where the video camera leads you. And you have to navigate along a video timeline and maybe you want to zoom in on a section of the house, but the camera has already moved on to some other part of the house.

In my view, hi resolution quicktime VR lends itself better to the buyer who wants to look around the house before driving out to see it in the flesh.

But your mileage may vary.

I'm a Realtor and the marketing of a property is layered so both good still VT and video tours are in order. The ability to post the property on UTube and other sites is key and just one layer. Once the video is posted there can be links back to sites where the homes is featured for more information and still shots. I'm going back and forth on what I want to use..flip camcorder or a larger samsung ms20 that might offer better stabilty when recording.