Pros/Cons

The only "pro" of shooting SD I can think of is you'll be dealing with smaller video files. Other than that, there is absolutely no reason to shoot in standard definition.
 
Equipment access, budget access. If you're moving ahead with purchasing a new piece of equipment though, I'd look at the HD world as SD won't necessarily carry you forward... although if all you're doing is youtube things, SD should do just fine. Anything for any wider distro, you should look at HD.
 
All SD cameras are not equal, like all HD cameras are not equal. When I was working in television, I shot with a $65,000 SD digi betacam, which gave better pictures than a
consumer SD camcorder from Walmart. You can now buy a $35,000 Beta-SP betacam
for about $1500....or a more affordable Sony PD-150 for about $350 (with all the bells
and whistles). I still shoot in SD (With a PD-150) and my only problem is that film festivals
are slowly getting more picky about what formats they will accept. But so far
CreateSpace/Amazon doesn't care WHAT the format is, so I continue to distribute
my SD stuff through them. Yes, I will upgrade to HD when my camera finally
craps-out, BUT that will mean that I will also have to upgrade my editing software (including
my "film look" software, "Moving Picture" software for animation), a bigger computer,
better DVD duplication equipment, and probably some things that I haven't thought of
yet. So switching will be expensive. BUT, the day will come to switch to HD.
 
I dunno, the VHS tapes I use when I film with this are just so darn handy to store. SD is definitely the way to go.

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