[MacDV] which camera is best? Short documentary-animation

[Richard Dalziel-Sharpe]

Peter
May I suggest a Sony DV8. I have one and it has stood up very well to 
hard use for nearly four years.
They are larger than DV cams, therefore have larger motors and most of 
the controls etc are easier to get at because of the size.
They use Hi 8 tape which is about half the price of DV tape.
If you only want stills to make your animation and if it will only need 
to be shown on television then the stills you can take with a video 
camera will be quite adequate. I would strongly suggest you get a 
separate digital still camera if you really need high quality stills.
You can get a Firewire pci card to put in your 8500 very cheaply, but 
the problem is that the system bus on an 8500 is probably bit slow for 
video capture. I tried using a 7300/200 which had about the same specs. 
I upgraded it with a Sonnet G3/400 heart transplant and never quite got 
it working right. The iMac would probably be a better bet, especially 
if it has iMovie loaded as this would  work very well for the size 
project you are envisaging.
Good luck
Richard