On Sat, 22 Dec 2001 18:46:51 -0000, "John" wrote:

>I have a Canon UC8Hi which was camcorder of the year some time ago. After a
>good write up in 'What Video Camera', I decided to upgrade from my Sony CCD
>455 8mm. I was disappointed in the relatively small apparent improvement in
>picture detail considering I was going from 250 to 400 lines. Also the
>colour bleed was still there and significant. The camera itself had a poor
>viewfinder compared with the Sony being out of focus around the edges.

I owned various Canon Hi-8s (including the UC and the
fancy L1 and A1-digital) - and found the TR200 and TR700
Sony Hi-8's generally better in terms of picture
quality. Ah, well...;-) Did you use the "S" connector,
BTW? Without using that, you may have missed some of the
advantages of the Hi-8 format compared with 8...

>I am thinking of upgrading to a digital camera. What I want is the best
>picture (fine) detail with minimal (or insignificant) colour bleed, a good
>B&W viewfinder (I find colour finders I have seen very grainy quality &
>difficult to judge focus),

Some are better than others...

>good sound with minimal motor noise, reasonably
>light and compact, don't need lots of fancy effects. As I have loads of Hi8
>tapes, I wondered about going to Digital 8 but have the following questions:

D8 makes sense, if you have many Hi-8 tapes...

>1. Is Mini DV better than digital 8 for quality?

The "format" is the same, but the imaging parts of the
D8 cameras are often inferior to those of the Mini-DVs.
The top end of the Sony D8 line uses a megapixel CCD,
and I've heard the image quality is good (but I have not
tried one...).

>2. Is a 3 CCD camera better than the single megapixel (or more) CCD?

Yes, but maybe not in the ways you might think... See:
www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/camcorder--comparison.htm
for a comparison of the five current Sony Mini-DV
camcorder imaging types, with frame-grabs and motion-video
description. One-chip image quality is getting better, but
3-chip is still better...

>3. What camera is recommended at a reasonable price (say up to £1000 UK
>money).

If that covers a TRV900 3-chip... If not, I would look at the
D8 "730" Sony, due to your Hi-8 tape collection. It may
have all you want in a camcorder now.

>My main use is family, holidays etc but I do like good sharp detailed
>pictures.