If money is tight I would suggest you keep the Hi8 camera as it is likely of much higher quality than most inexpensive (under $800) miniDV cameras especially if it is really old.
The problem comes in the dub. If you are looking to make DVDs wait until you can afford a much better camera. If not you will get your best quality by connecting the camera straight to a television and playing it direct. I do videography for a living.
When the industry went to DV they almost immediately began cheapening the cameras to take advantage of an unsuspecting public. Because the "generation loss" inherent in analog cameras like yours is not as significant in DV the first thing they did was to reduce the size of the CCD (like a lens) to cut costs. "The public won't even notice".......which most didn't. Your camera probably has a 1/4 CCD. You won't find a 1/4 CCD in any DV camera less than $1000 now. Back then 1/4 CCD was considered too little. Not enough light would be let in. Now 1/4 CCD is like gold. 1/6 and 1/5 is more common.
Then they decided,
K, we fooled them so let's eliminate little wheels and buttons and knobs. Let them fish through endless menus to do simple tasks. In it's place we'll put a whole bunch of useless "features and special effects" they'll never use all found in buried menus. For extra cost we'll put in manual focus, but not of course a little focus wheel, No, we'll make the 4-way paddle operate the focus and every other damned thing. Then we'll give them a steady shot feature, but we'll make it cut out suddenly when the light drops to a level the 1/5 CCD can't handle so it will serve as a "sales feature" that is useless.
Now let's get rid of those expensive side loading tape cassette doors and put them on the bottom where it's cheaper o manufacture. Too bad if they have the camera mounted on a tripod because it is so light weight it can't be held still and the steady shot isn't working because the light is a little low because of the puny size CCD we put in there because they wouldn't know any better. Yes, the tripod won't save you. You will have to remove the camera from the tripod to change tapes because it was cheaper to put the loading door on the bottom of the camera.
John
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