I'm looking into doing some in-car recording just for fun. With a small budget, which is better quality-wise: an 8mm handicam with anti-shock or a digital video camera?

Obviously it's way easier to transfer the digital video to a PC but how is the quality compared to 8mm? I believe 8mm comes out to something like 270 horizontal lines whereas some digital video cameras can do 640x480.

Anyone tried either/both? Although the digital can get better resolution I'm concerned that the bumpiness in the car (and lack of anti-motion features) will perhaps throw off the focus or picture. The 8mm cam has anti-shock, auto-focus, and some other features that will smooth that stuff out.

What do y'all use or recommend? Thanks.

 

Digital.

You'll find it simple to edit (plug it into a Windows XP machine) compared to 8 mm which will require a device like a Canopus ADVC-110 or the like. You'll want to set any camera you use to manual focus any who.

 

For anyone interested, I tried a cheapy 640x480 digital and it turned out pretty good. Seems to suck up around 5MB/minute but the quality is really nice.

Here's my 5 minute ride to work this morning (25MB) from the mini-mart parking lot. Quality is dark because it was really overcast out. I wedged the camera inbetween the passenger headrest. Windows cracked.

Drive to Work (please right-click Save instead of streaming)

Warning: Boring video. Traffic lights and other dull activities included. This is just a test run of the camera.

(link will be removed in October)