If you wish to carry your camcorder as hand luggage you can do so but it will be counted as your one piece of allowable hand luggage and will need to conform to the limits of size and weight. I do this every time I go to Tenerife and occasionally I am asked to take it out of the bag and theyscan inside with the little sniffer thing. A bag that is within the limits allowed means you can get a book and cables for camera in the bag. If you only have this as hand luggage it is possible that the check in people won't bother to weigh it, that has been my experience at least.

I recently took my camcorder to Fuerteventura, in its own case with spare D8 tapes and batteries, all inside my hand luggage bag with all my other stuff. You're only allowed one piece of hand luggage but it's amazing how much you can cram into one bag Obviously, this one bag has to be within certain dimensions (to fit into overhead locker) and has to be 5kg or less (in case it falls out of overhead locker and conks someone on the head...)
Had no problems at security with the contents of my hand luggage (camcorder, digital camera, iPod, mobile phone etc), only saw a couple of people putting laptops through seperately.

Ok thanks, will try and take as hand luggage...wish me luck