I was hoping to buy the Canon FS20, as it has a mic input and is a fairly good camera, however, nowhere seems to be in stock and it’s proving difficult to come by.

If someone can help me find a camera that meets my needs I will forever grateful!

It’s for my boyfriend, who plays in a band – he wants to record updates and also live shows. The sound quality does not need to be amazing, as these recordings will just be for the band, however, I think I should get a camera with at least the option of adding an external mic, in case he ever wants to. I’m struggling to find anything within my price range (up to approximately £300) with mic input, aside from the Canon mentioned above. An alternative is a Sony with an accessory shoe, as pearson do an accessory that allows you to connect a mic input. However, from what I can tell the lower end cameras do not have accessory shoes. Is it possible to buy an accessory shoe to attach to it?? I find it all quite confusing.

Also, I want flash or HDD memory, with a USB port. Most seem to have this. Anyone who can suggest a camera, or tell me where to find the canon fs20, would be amazing.

You are missing a requirement.

Manual audio gain control. The FS20 does not have it. With loud audio, there is no mic by itself that can record decently without manual audio gain control.

You also do NOT want to record to a hard disc drive. The loud audio can cause enough vibration to have the camcorder lock the drive heads and the result is a buffer memory error". The FS20 is flash memory which does not have the vibration problem.

I know it is more $, but the Canon miniDV tape based HV40 (if your computer has a firewire port to import the video) or the Sony HDR-HC9… Or, with Flash memory, the Canon HF or HF S series. All of these have a 1/8" (3.5mm) stereo mic jack and manual audio gain control.

Another option is to get whatever camcorder you decide and record the audio separately with a field recorder – like a Zoom H2 (that has manual audio gain control) and sync that with the video during editing (and mute the audio captured by the camcorder).

When the audio is too LOUD, it will be recorded very "muddy" in the camcorder – along with static (peaking). This cannot be fixed by editing. The mic gain control and audio level being recorded needs to be monitored so the levels are not killing the internal recording mechanism.