Sony HDR SR8 camcorder

[nick francis]

I really fancy this for a forthcoming holiday but I also want a small and high def camera to mount in car for trackdays etc.
Trouble is I heard the Hard drive shuts down to self protect if it experiences a "shock"
Anybody got some first hand experience

Nick

[DodoRacing]

Get a SD version to be on the safe side.

[twister]

I couldn't find the SR8 manual online, but the older SR1 I've got does allow you to disable the shock sensor (Sony actually call it the drop sensor, but methinks this is a touch misleading, having discovered that it shuts down the drive if you give the camera body a strong enough whack sideways as well as if it falls...) so that it'll keep on recording until you shake it up so hard that the drive is physically incapable of recording anything. Assuming the SR8 has the same option, this may be sufficient to let you use it as part of an in-car setup, but to be honest I'd have to agree with the comment above and suggest that, if you want to be sure of getting anything recorded, you really need to be looking at solid state storage rather than anything mechanical (i.e. hard drives, tapes, wire reel, wax rolls...)

[nick francis]

DodoRacing said:

Get a SD version to be on the safe side.

trouble with the sd version is that 4gb cards only store so much video and need either replacing or emptyng pretty soon. at a normal trackday i really dont wanna be bovvered with mem cards etc, I jus wanna concentrate on the driving. The 100 gb hdd of the sony looks good for this. Given that I wanna use the video for non car things too I think ill press on and buy one.

If its any good I'll post some vids up here in due course

cheers
nick

[nick francis]

changed my mind, wasnt sure about the moving parts and the hard drive so I went for a panasonic HDC-SR5. A bit cheaper and records to sd cards. Got it tonight and bin playing with it all evening (the camcorder!!)

also got the panasonic burner for recording dvds without pc

not sure how it will work out

when i was at the shop i saw this

http://www.panasonic.co.uk/pukweb04-otm-cam-sd/sdr...

which I thought would be absolutley fantastic "duck" taped to my spoiler during track session

nick