I’m going to be buying a camcorder soon and deciding on whether to go digital or not. Are they really worth it? I can spend abou $1500 if I had to. Besides put them on my PC quicker, what are the advantages? What do they get recorded on? How long do they usually last, in other words, how much “tape” can I make? Once I film it, can I only play the video or pictures on my PC or the camera itself?
You want a DV or MiniDV camera, but they’re expensive. The advantages are you can make infinate generation copies without losing any quality like you do with analog cameras. You’re shooting broadcast quality video, far, far superior to VHS or Hi-8. You can play back directly on the camcorder. Most have RCA ports to hook up to your TV or VCR and all have IEEE-1394 (“Firewire”) ports to hook up to your computer for online editing. (If you have a Mac, get iMovie (cheap) or Final Cut Pro (expensive))
Try buydig.com there prices are incredible & you can get a 4 year warrentee for under $100.00…
My brother recently bought a DV Camcorder that takes Super-8 tapes, just like his old (“analog?”) one. The cool thing is that now, when he puts his old tapes into the new camcorder and plugs it into the Firewire port on his iMac, the camcorder “digitizes” his old footage so he can edit them in iMovie.
Waaaay cool! 
Just a little nitpick: Super-8 is film. Hi8 is video.
If you’re looking to make home movies, then Hi8 is fine. If you want to make home movies and make copies of copies of copies, or if you want to put the video onto your computer, then DV is a better choice.
If you want to “make a movie”, then look at a 3-chip DVcam. I’ve used the Sony DV-1000 and the Canon on no-budget productions. These are “pro-sumer” cameras. That is, they are in between the cameras you use for family footage, and the very-high-res cameras used to shoot a “film”. Lars von Trier has had a lot of success with shooting on DV and then blowing the finished product up to 35mm for theatrical release. I saw a Danish film that was shot on a one-chip DV camera and was blown up to 35mm. The filmmaker’s intent was to use natural lighting, and you could tell it was video in many places. Had he used traditional set lighting, the images would have been better. But the script was very tight and the acting was excellent, and the some of the camera movements would have been difficult with a larger camera. We shot a feature using a Sony DV-1000 and the results so far have been extraordinary. If it gets released on video, we’ll add “Film Look” to it to make it look as if it was shot on film. If we decide to make a film print, the film’s natural grain will give it the “look”. (Although I still have some doubts about contrast, which video, as yet, seems not to be able to handle very well.)
I don’t know from your OP, but I assume you’re not looking to make a professional “film”. If that’s the case, then any of a number of DV cameras will be fine. Sony makes a one-chip camera with an excellent Zeiss lens. Once you have recorded (and edited, if you desire) on DV, you can transfer it to VHS so you can watch it on your teevee. But you wouldn’t want to make copies from the VHS tape.
All I’m looking for really is home movies but there’s always the dream of making the next Blair Witch Project so that I can retire to the Islands.
I don’t remember exactly, but I think TBWP cost about $30,000 to make. The Last Broadcast, a similar film that came out two years before TBWP cost (IIRC) about $900.
El Mariachi, made by Texas film student Robert Rodrigues, cost $7,500 to make on 16mm film. It took another $300,000 or thereabouts to make it releaseable in theatres.
I think Rodriguez sold his blood and volunteered for crack medical research to finance that film.
If you get a DV camera, you are talking some major HD space. You need the camera. then you have to buy a card to connect the camera to the computer & software for editting.
Figure about $800 for everything. JVC Camera Studio DV software.
Yeah… if you get a digital camcorder and you want to manipulate the video on your computer, prepare to get another hard drive for editing. I went to my friend’s house; he has a simple editing setup, and we pulled a five-minute clip off my DV tape. It took up 1.6 GB (yes, gigabytes :eek:) of disk space.