Instead of buying a digital camera, I was thinking of buying a high resolution video camera (Sony), and a video capture card for my PC. The Sony TRV65 CCD is 470K (440K effective) pixels. Since 640 x 480 is 307K, it seems that I should be able to get reasonable resolution captures. Also I get the advantages of: - Fantastic zoom capabilities, - Huge, inexpensive, portable (analog) tape storage. - The ability to choose my frames, and resolutions later. - Very low light capability. - Sound dubbing. - etc.

Does this seem like a reasonable alternative? Anybody else gone this route? Am I missing something?

Thanks Randy

-- Randy Howe (rhowe@axionet.com), July 30, 1998

Answers

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Lacking scanner access, I used about half-dozen captures from Hi-8. The results (videocam was on a tripod) were OK...at 200x300 pixels, no larger. I would consider a video camera an ergonomic, reasonable substitute for a *low* end digicam if you are primarily after motion or small images [after all, no digicam has 30 fps frame rate]

-- Oleg Volk (olegv@ddb.com), August 03, 1998.

Randy, I thought the same would work for me. I shoot a couple of different Hi-8 prosumer units and had been using a Snappy to capture. I was only moderately satisfied. Then my son sent me some pics from his new Kodak 210 and I could not believe the clarity, resolution, etc. I bought an Epson 600 and was amazed at the improvement over Hi-8 clips. I just purchased a Sony digital (Passport) video camera and it is a bit of an improvement over Hi-8 when capturing frames, but I became truly hooked when I purchased my a Nikon CoolPix 900 (still) digicam. True, you do have nearly infinite capacity with video, but you will never be happy with video capture when you see frames side by side with a mega pixel still camera in comparison! BTW, I cannot get the Epson out of my wifes hands now!

-- Jim Hay (Desert1s@aol.com), August 03, 1998.