A camcorder dillema (1 Viewer)

[Kevin Porter]

So I got the Sony TRV350 last month which happens to be a Digital8 camcorder. I used it to video a baseball project I was working on. So I buy Sony's biggest battery and about 30 Digital8 tapes so I can finish this thing. After I shoot all the footage, I come home and edit it on Premiere for about two weeks straight. It's shown at the high school and it's a huge sucess. So now I'm getting a bunch of orders for videos and some other offers as well such as birthday parties and the likes of that. A couple of days later, I head over to Fry's and stumble by their camcorder section. And I find the Canon GL2. I try it out on the display and it looks fantastic. The picture was excellent, the camcorder was fairly light, it handled great. So I have fallen in love with this camcorder. I can get it for about $1800 shopping around eBay. But I've invested a lot into the other camcorder including tapes and a huge battery. I can return the camcorder itself since I bought it at a place with a great return policy. My question is would it be worth it to try and sell the battery and tapes and buy the GL2 or should I stick with the inferior one?

 

[Chris Hovanic]

If you are going to get into video and start selling your work it would be worth investing in one of the nice prosumer cameras like the cannon GL2.

Go for it and sell the extra stuff on e-bay you may be suprised how much you can get for it

 

[Tony Whalen]

Buy the GL2. I was a professional videographer for several years, and you at LEAST want a prosumer-level camera if you are getting into this to make a few bucks.

If you are new at this, and don't know a lot about shot composition, lighting and other stuff like that, I highly recommend you invest in this course:
http://www.adita.com/supervid.htm

It's a tad dated now, as it doesn't deal with DIGITAL equipment, but the info on tapes 2-4 is worth every penny. (5-7 deals with editing of various levels of equipment)

They also have a really pro-level CD-ROM tutorial on Premiere which is great. And you can download one of the lessons for free to try out. https://www.adita.com/premiere6.htm

Most importantly, have fun!

 

[Bob Movies]

You should definitely sell the camera. The GL2's MiniDV format is far superior to Digital8. Have you noticed that Digital8 tapes take FOREVER to rewind? MiniDV is the accepted standard, especially if you ever need to take your tapes somewhere else for dubbing or anything like that.

The quality of the GL2 is also far superior to the TRV350, you'd notice an immediate difference. It's a 3 chip camera, which is why it's at the lower end of the prosumer market.

I'd say that you should return the camera, take the loss on the battery (even though you can probably recoup some / most of the price by selling it on eBay) and don't worry about the tapes, since you should never really be reusing tapes anyway.

After using miniDV you'll wonder how you ever tolerated Digital8!

Bob