Can anyone give me any good points/bad points on Digital 8.
Like-
What's the quality vs. DV (in the 350-400 price range)
What are the Digital 8 tapes like?
And how easy are they to use.
If it makes any difference, I'm looking at a Sony blah-blah-blah 245 model-It's in the Argos Catalogue.
Oh, and, it connects via USB-How much quality am I going to use without a Firewire connection?
To anybody that reads, thank you.
Digital 8 tapes are obviously bigger than mini-DV because it just uses Hi-8 cassettes.
In terms of quality, I think D8 is superior, it just seems cleaner, crisper. But that might be because my mates always shoot LP, but then my LP is always sharper than that. So to sum up, I think D8 is better.
And I'm thinking that it'll have a firewire on it somewhere. It'd be very silly if it didn't.
YOU BASTARD! I'M THE ONE WITHOUT FIREWIRE!!!
I am of course joking.
But still, I don't have a firewire card, and the camera uses USb anyway-Will I really lose that much quality?
USB is for webcam and picture upload only. Either it wont work at all, or the footage will be webcam standard at best.
As for D8...
The camcorders use the same codec as DV its just stored on a bigger tape making the camcorders bulkier. This bring the cost down so they actually outperform a DV camera of a similar price. ?400 on D8 camera will get you ?600 worth of DV. The major disadvantage is that you have a fairly bulky camera (by todays tiny standards anyways) but for us film makers its actually an advantage becos it makes for smoother handheld shots (note: you should use a tripod as much as possible anyways).
The only problem with D8 these days is that Sony has changed the target audience of them it seems. Now they are seen as cheap alternatives to DV and lack features like headphone out, mic in, DVin. My older D8 camera has all of these features but you may be limited to one model in the current range that has these.
As already mentioned D8 is effectivley the same quality as DV. However, you are limited to the quality of the lense and single CCD (as far as I'm aware there's no 3 CCD models). Plus you are limited to buying Sony as it's their technology, but that ain't really a bad thing. I know some of the older models would play back old analogue video 8 and Hi-8 recorded tapes, although I'm not sure if the newer models do.
You can get away with using normal Video 8 tapes and record onto them digitally. Sony recommend you use Hi-8 tapes but it doesn't seem to make any difference recording on Video 8 tapes.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well that's a first for an independent filmmaker. I couldn't agree more.you should use a tripod as much as possible anyways
By the way, DIGITAL EIGHT KICKS ASS! [img]graemlins/thumbs_up.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/grrr.gif[/img]
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