[jyl]

On a whim, pretty much, I bought an old Canon XHA1 video camera for $250. This is a HD camera that uses mini-DV tapes (remember those?). It seems to have a nice lens and more than enough bells and whistles for me. I think it is fifteen or so years old.

I actually have little use for a videocamera other than videotaping my son's dance performances. I've shown some of those videos before here.

Previously I've had the cheapest possible Canon camcorder that takes SD cards but has practically no manual controls; like imagine you ran into Best Buy five years ago and spent a couple hundred bucks. It's really bad for videoing dance, which is low light, lots of movement, changing focus, etc. So I wanted something better, but still didn't want to spend much of anything...

Okay, I rooted around, found a blank mini-DV tape, and am playing with this video camera. I think it will do. Here's the only irritant: it records to tape...

I think I can get it to record to a MacBook Pro using some combination of Firewire cables and Thunderbolt adapters, and Quicktime. I'm going to try anyway.

It would be cool if it could record to a hard drive. But I don't think that will be simple.

Anyone remember using these things back in the day?

Any tips?