Camcorders, Hi8 or Digital8?

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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Camcorders, Hi8 or Digital8?

Posted: 6/12/2002 3:29:14 PM EDT

I recently purchased a Sony TRV-608 from Circuit City. Nice camera, lots of bells and whistles, the night shot feature is pretty amazing. I decided on the 608 because it had the image stabilization, a higher digital zoom and most importantly the USB link. I had thought about digital 8 but heard that they suck battery power much quicker and the difference in quality is negligble in practive (versus what the paper claims are). What are your experiences? I have 30 days in which to return it for refund or upgrade. Is it worth spending another $100 to go to digital 8?

Posted: 6/12/2002 3:58:52 PM EDT

[#1]

MiniDV is the way to go nowadays. If you have your heart set on 8mm I would go digital. What really effects quality is how many chips are in the camera. The top quality ones use 3 CCD(chips) A 3 chip uses a different chip to capture the blues, reds, and greens. A cool website is [url]http://www.camcorders.org/[/url], might help you out.
I have a panasonic PV-DV951. Compared to my old Sony HiFi-8 the battery lasts forever though it is probably due to battery improvements.

Posted: 6/12/2002 4:13:38 PM EDT

[#2]

I find that I'm at the wide end of the zoom rather than the telephone end. Anything about 3x or better needs a nice heavy tripod or a rest to use.

Rarely do I ever do I use the telephoto end of my zooms and would rather have a nice wide angle to do better indoor shooting.

I have a couple Hi-8's and a couple VHS machines but would go with Digital-8 if I bought one today so that I could connect it via Firewire to a video capture card. If you're just shooting movies of the kid etc. you'll pay half as much for a Hi-8 which has better than TV video quality.

Posted: 6/12/2002 4:18:30 PM EDT

[#3]

While Digital8 is neat (cost effective alternative to MiniDV), just remember that it is proprietary to Sony camcorders. You want Digital8, you _have_ to buy Sony. We have a Canon Ultura MiniDV camcorder, and it just rocks. Firewire interface (to the Mac or PC) and the quality of Mini DV.

-Gloftoe

Posted: 6/12/2002 4:25:43 PM EDT

[#4]

Here's the deal, I have a much older pc... think pentium 2 guys with a 400 mhz processor. I'm not going to put the money into a fireathingamajiggy card. Its for the occassional home movie and to film some political events I attend for reference down the road. I'm just not sure what the extra money is really going to buy me. MiniDV is out, too much money, if I go digital it would be the low end Sony Digital8 for around $500.

Posted: 6/12/2002 4:27:42 PM EDT

[#5]

I just got a Sony TRV840. Digital 8. The battery which came with the unit lasts 90 minutes. 1/2 of what it can with normal 8. The tapes, you can buy cheapo ones and they look just as good as the digital 8 tapes. You can get two for about 6 dollars. Mini-dv tapes are more expensive.

I'd get the best optical zoom I could. Mine is only 15x but you can buy an optical 2x adapter which = 30x. The digital zooms pretty much suck.

Btw, my 840 makes a loud noise indoors. It is the tape spinning and the microphone picks it up. Outdoors, you can't really hear it. So, if you take lots of indoor movies, make sure you test it out with the tape going.

Also, the quality of my 840 is outstanding.
Good luck.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Camcorders, Hi8 or Digital8?

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