Dick,
Just bought a Sony DCR-HC38 for about $300 at Best Buy. It has a 40 X Optical zoom. It use mini digital tape. It's not fancy but I found out that the DVD type cameras are difficult to work with Macs and iHD as well as iMovie (or so I was told).
I use mine for shooting my granddaughter while she plays soccer and my grandson while he does his thing (mostly being cute).
Tom