Below I've copied the original question plus the essential parts of the expert answer. This answer does not take into account the details of the question.
The expert's essential answer is to buy the new Sony DCR-DVD505 which will give a 3 second burst of slow motion on the assumption that this will give clear frames to identify speeding bicyclists as they cross the finish. Though this high frame rate (240fps) will most likely do the job, 3 sec. does not cover many racers. The second choice given was to buy a $6000 HiDef camera, not exactly economical.
Unfortunately the answer is not in new gadgets. The answer is as old as photography. You want to freeze motion, increase your shutter speed. Many camcorders have adjustable shutter speeds. A speed of 1/250 or 1/500 of a sec should do the trick. I am sure you can find a camcorder quite a bit under $6000 which will do your job.
You might even find in the depths of your manual that you have that capability on your handycam. It probably has a program setting for sports which will help but may or may not be sufficient.
The drawback to high shutter or frame rate is that the amount of light reaching the imager is significantly reduced requiring fairly bright light like a sunny day. BTW the DCR-DVD505 is effectively giving you ~1/240 shutter speed.
Q. I'm looking for an economical digital video camera that will be set up to catch riders' numbers as they cross the finish in bicycle races. The Sony Handycam I've used produces frames that are blurred when I step through them. The camera needs to be able to capture very clear images when I go back to step through the frames one by one. Any suggestions or specs I should be looking for?
--Scott Robison
CNET reader e-mail
A. snip-But Sony's recently introduced DCR-DVD505 camcorder has a new feature called Smooth Slow Recording, which captures 3 seconds of video at 240fps and plays it back at 60fps. ---snip--- the Panasonic AG-HVX200 is capable as well, but I suspect $6,000 is outside your definition of economical.
P.S. This probably is not the right ploace to post this, but I could not find a way to direct an email to the ''experts''

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