HD camera

[mountman62]

looking at getting an HD video cam to use, the wife wants a new one to film the grandson, so i thought we might do some double duty on it. the bad part is she only wants to spend around $500, so what are some ideas, i know it has to be HD, 1080, would like to have one that would take a shotgun mike, but i am not very knowledgeable about them, so any help you can give