There is a bit more than just the cam...unfortunately.
I run one of the latest Panasonic DV cams with plenty of zoom etc.
The cam has a good range of optical zoom which is important. The digital zoom is a nice feature, you need a tripod (expensive one to keep the cam steady) and the picture becomes cluttered because the pixels become squared...
It takes stills, nice feature...
To do something with your video you need a video input device, a tv card with appropriate input and output sockets, a connection to the sound card etc...
And you need a video recorder to tape everything after you have edited your movie.
The Panasonic cam needs extra software to download still pictures which can be taken from any frame of your movie.
If you buy the cam in US or in Asia, your system may be able to record as well, this is not allowed in Europe as this changes the cam into a video recorder and this imposes some extra tax in several countries. I am told it is only a software change...but who knows.
The quality of the DV tapes are good, take the ones with the red flap as they have memory for the elapsed time etc.
My total investment was about £3.500 as I found it required to put an scsi adapter and a 9 GB scsi drive in my PC to provide faster dataflow and to avoid gaps etc...
Yes, I would do it again but, as an information aside, I use this system rarely for private issues...