Advice for camcorder shopping

[[mooninite]]

I'm an amateur movie maker on the looks for an inexpensive solution to my camera needs. I'll primarily make music videos with my friends and we take a lot of time with them and do a lot of planning and so on. Our current camera just plain sucks and I would like to upgrade the image quality and get some focus/zoom controls. Other manual controls would be nice, but I don't think they are necessary. I do not need a good mic on the camera as I don't usually need a mic, and if I do need one I would use my computer. I am looking in the $500 range, and it seems that the cameras I have found fit that range.

I've looked around a little and I see that Canon ranks high in the camera market right now.

Canon ZR85
Canon ZR90

^ Differences? I didn't really find any. The 85 is priced higher than the 90, however. Any reasoning behind this?

Canon XL1S

^ The top dog of an amateur film producer's needs I hear. I could probably afford this camera, but would the other cameras I listed do near the same job, but without manual controls?

Any other suggestions?