Sony Handycams

[Myron]

I visited a Sony Style store yesterday and was surprised to see that there were no DVD or Mini DV Handycams. Has Sony stopped manufacturing them? I know that they stopped the 8mm formats a while back. I hope they still have tapes for these. What's worse is that it seems that the latest Handycams seem not to have Electronic Viewfinders. Is this the case? I always have difficulty using the LCD screen in bright light so I depend on the electronic viewfinder. Are these EVFs being eliminated to save space? I dislike the new Handycams because the Memory Sticks are very expensive compared to the DVDs or even the tapes.

[Avrin]

Traditional electronic viewfinders and pushbutton/rotary controls increase manufacturing costs, so they were forced out of fashion. Now an LCD "handles" everything.

And for a Digital8 camera, you may use a cheap Video8 cassette (not even of the Hi8 variety) to record in digital. That's what SONY should have advertised when introducing the format (at the time, Video8 cassettes were several times less expensive than miniDV ones). But instead they tried to sell Digital8 cassettes, and people got confused, thinking that the new cameras would only work with this new and expensive media.