Considering picking up an 8mm for dash cam/time lapse - thoughts?

[Mark Farnik]

Hello all
I recently bought a Panasonic GS-320 3CCD Mini-DV as my primary chase cam. I've already shot some video with it, its a fantastic little video camera and I can't wait to put it to use in the field this spring
But as storm season grows nearer and nearer, I did some deep thinking and a little homework, I discovered two things:
A) I really wanted a second cam to function as my dedicated dash cam
B) I wanted to do some time lapse video, but MiniDV isn't exactly the optimal format for that kind of videography...

I've heard lots of postive things over the years about 8mm/Digital-Hi8 and time lapse, so I did a search on Denver's Craigslist, and stumbled across a gently used Sony TRV-37 8mm video camera with 20x optical/200xdigital zoom and 0 Lux NightShot (perfect for low light shooting) and 16:9 widescreen recording. It comes with a leather carry case, battery charger, and a spare battery. The seller only wants $100 for it.

So, what do y'all think? For $100, would it be a good buy for a dash/time lapse cam, or should I look around a little more and try and find a Digital or Hi8? I don't want to spend more than $200 on one, I already dropped $450 for the Panasonic and really can't afford to spend more than $650 TOTAL on video equipment for this year.
If anyone has any thoughts/recommendations, they would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Andrew Ryan]

That camera sounds pretty good. Hi8 can produce surprisingly good video. It won't be as good as mini-dv but it should be good for a dedicated dash cam.

 

[Francisco Aguirre]

so you want time lapse video if you are good on electronics you can build your own time lapse timer and with minor hack to the switchs of your camera you can hook up this circuit , and make it pretty cheap , i would sugest you to use a old camera maybe a 8 mm is more simple to hack in the book 101 spy gadgets for the evil genius there is a chapter dedicated to time lapse video , and also motion acitvated video with cheap surplus components .