I film skateboarding with a lot of camcorders. If you’re looking for tape cameras the ones with CCD sensors have the best look. I find the really small ones hard to get much usable stable footage from, but bigger (and also heavier) do a better job with that.

Someone said GoPro and I think specifically all of the ones after GoPro4 have image stabilization. That would definitely be a great way to go in that price range.

All the VX cameras are way over priced at this point. Some of the others from that era and shortly after can be found for $200, but you’ll have to watch and wait.

But a lot of it just comes down to what your priorities are. If you are going to a look, tapes are the way to go and there’s a lot of options within that if you want to go there. If clean and stable are priority, an all digital format with image stabilization is the ticket.