We'll start with a point of reference: Judges wear blue polo shirts and have nothing to do with decisions of legality on the field. You actually want the referees in their striped shirts. Or, more likely, the head ref in a black-and-yellow shirt.
Now, on to your question.
You may not be aware of this, but in addition to the Game and Robot rules, there are the Tournament rules, Section 5 of the Game Manual. And what you seem to have run afoul of is Section 5.5.9, T26-1, the Special Equipment rules.
In part, these read:
Quote:
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The only equipment, provided it does not block visibility for FIELD STEWARDS or audience members or jam or interfere with the remote sensing capabilities of another Team, including vision systems, acoustic range finders, sonars, infrared proximity detectors, etc. (e.g. including imagery that, to a reasonably astute observer, mimics the Vision Guides), that may be brought in to the CASTLE are as follows:
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(emphasis mine, for clarity)
After that, there's a list of items, none of which is "camera not part of Operator Console" or anything that I could reasonably consider to include that. I would consider that the refs would have good reason to advise you not to bring that anymore, under that rule. (The options are essentially to not start the match, to remove the camcorder, or to have the camcorder as part of the operator console.) Whether the rule makes sense for camcorders is up for debate--though if that particular device happened to use infrared to auto-focus, I could see the part about "not interfere with remote sensing capabilities of another team" kicking in.
For future reference, you'll more likely want to have the camcorder in the hands of whoever on your team has the team media pass, if one is given out at your regional. They should be able to be on the sideline (or... close enough. I mean, there is a limit to how close they'll be allowed to get, for their own safety).