|
Digital 8 was and is a good "bridge" solution for people straddling the analog and digital world. If you already had old-fashion 8mm or Hi-8 tapes, a digital 8 camera with firewire can play them, encode them digitally and send the digital output to your machine. So you can then edit the tape digitially. It can also work as a pass-thru between your computer and other analog devices. For example, if you have VHS tapes that you want to export digitally, you can hook the VHS deck up to the Digital 8 camera and then hook the Digital 8 firewire cable to the computer. The Digital 8 camera (or at least some of them) will take the VHS input, encode it digitally and send it on to your computer.
But if you don't have that need, I wouldn't go with digital 8. Frankly, mini-DV-format camcorders of reasonable competence are now on sale in the low 300s, and while mini-DV will not be around forever, it will be around longer than Digital 8, which is solely a creature of Sony and will abandoned unceremoniously one day without warning (Sony's way). MiniDV is (for now) an industry standard.
Like others say, I wouldn't obsess on the lens much. Digital zoom just gives you a bigger picture with less detail, and it's a bugger to keep the camera steady enough when it's zoomed out 30x or more, unless you're using a tripod. If you ever plan on doing video at a party or gathering with a lot of people, you should get a model with an external mike jack. The condenser mike on cheap cameras can just go crazy in a crowd. A good-enough mike is relatively cheap. Also a good idea if you want to tape something/someone you can't get near, like somebody speaking at a podium to a crowd. You can put the mike on the podium and stand back with your camera a reasonable distance.
|