All I need is a good script
Ok, with my upcoming trip to New Zealand, I really needed a video camera. I mean--how many times do you go to New Zealand? I mean, for me, just twice. Once to visit, once to move. :D Seriously though, we’re going for two weeks, and plan on using up tons of traditional film; but we want to video tape it too, to make a nice DVD of our vacation. (Courtesy Final Cut Pro, the tool most often used by television shows and Hollywood for editing.)
So I need a way to get the video into my Mac, right? Well, I have a boss with a digital 8mm, and a coworker with a MiniDV Hitachi. Neither one (and rightly so) are willing to risk its journey with me overseas. Not to mention that the digital 8mm is too bulky anyway. Either way, strike any chance of borrowing a camcorder. So, one month from our trip, I start scouring Ebay, thinking that I’ll pick up a used digital 8mm and deal with it.
I simply couldn’t find a used one that was in working condition (what’s with all of the “semi-tested, it comes on!” camcorders on Ebay??). And new ones were...cheap. Almost too cheap. Why are they so cheap? Now, the last time I looked at prices of camcorders, it was about eight years ago working at Service Merchandise (R.I.P.). Decent cameras were $999, and when newer technology kept emerging, the cameras got better--but the price remained the same. So I expected to see the same thing now. Boy was I ever wrong. I started doing heavy model research at Epinions, Amazon, Circuit City, and Camcorder Info Dot Com.
In the end, I came out with a JVC GR-DV500, at a weekend sale at the local Circuit City for $429. We’d done well saving for our trip, so I just tore that from the vacation spending cash budget.
Important to note is the info shoe, for attachments such as gun microphones--important for such projects as Star Wars fan films. 
(Working title: The Lord of the Matrix Wars: Return of the Phantom Revolutions)
And as a final piece of coolness, I was at the laundromat last night, reading Mac World, and I can use my camcorder and Mini DV tapes as data backup for my computer using DV Backup!! (Mac only) And it stores about 10:GB: on one sixty minute tape. Woohoo!!
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Very cool. A video camera is another one of those “cool to have but I’d never actually use it” things for me. I’m just bad at stuff like taking pictures, keeping journals, etc. No doubt it’ll come back to haunt me later. (Like the fact that my parents took no home movies of us kids!)
The data backup trick is definitely a really neat bonus!
By Chris Curtis on October 7, 2003 at 04:34pm link