Digital8 or Mini DV

[MrStumpy]

Hi im about to buy a camera and I have 2 choices:

Sony DCR-TRV 320 Digital8

or

Panasonic DS15 2.5in LCD SCREEN mini DV

Can someone help as I cannot choose and I have hardly any money and probably wont be able to buy another for a long time.

thnx

Ben

[miker]

They both use firewire (sony call it i.Link but it is the same IEEE1394 standard) and they both use the same digital codec, the only difference is the actual tape. Get the cheapest, unless you specifically need to playback old Video8 or Hi8 tapes in which case get Digital8.

[eddie]

I dont know these camera's but if you've narrowed it down to two, and as miker says they both use firewire, then I woulde choose the one with the most manual overrides, failing that one with an LCD screen instead of the eyepeice, failing that look at the lenses, choose the best lens.
You might find that there isnt much in it.

[MrStumpy]

thanks for your help.
The Digital8 camera is the cheapest as its in a sale and I get store discount.
But with the mini DV cam it comes with on camera editing which I think maybe helpful. But with both I would like to get a firewire card and edit on the PC anyway.
Does anyone know of a place I could get a cheap firewire card so with the money I save buying the digital8 I could buy one?

thnx

Ben

[miker]

www.scan.co.uk

do one for about ?40 I think.

If you look hard enough, you can find the fine Adobe Premiere 6.0 for, um, evaluation. It supports IEEE1394 DV firwire i.link whatever your manufacturer calls it.

BTW, I haven't checked the specs on either camera, I am only assuming they have firewire since it's pretty much standard on any digital camera, so be sure to check this before you buy!

[This message has been edited by miker (edited March 08, 2001).]

[MrStumpy]

Cheers ill check it out....

Ben

[CMBmovies]

hi, I shoot using my digital8 camera, usually in preference to the the big boys they have at college, ive cut my footage in with some shot on sony DSR300's for local tv and it looked fine.

if its cheaper, get the digital8. tapes are cheaper too. Plus you can enable the firewaire in on d8 cameras cheaply and easily. Im not sure if its so easy for regular mini-dv cams.

So when you edit on your pc, not only does the video come out digitally via firewire.. you can tape the finished version back on to a d8 tape with no quality loss

[MrStumpy]

Well I bought the digital 8 and im now trying out the functions. Its good, the only problem is the fact it doesnt have DV in..
umm oh well...

Ben

[CMBmovies]

you can enable dv in, check out sights such as.. www.datavision.co.uk what you need is either a widget or a link to your pc so you can simply tell the camera to enable dv in, you only need to do it once and its done forever.. let me know how you get on, good luck

CMB

[Barnstormed]

Datavision Widgets are atleast ?80. Smart DV http://www.smartdv.co.uk do one for most cameras for about ?30. They also do discounts if you get a firewire card at the same time.

The enablers do work to. I have one and it has worked flawlessley from day one.
______________________
Matt
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