Canon L2 Hi8

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Whitney_H

Hey everyone.

I am a still photographer who knows very little about video. Recently I had a video camera land in my lap, along with two lenses - it's a Canon L2 Hi8 and I don't know the first thing about it. Are Hi8 tapes still easy access? Does anyone know anything about this camera, or know of a direction to point me in so I can educate myself?

I appreciate any feedback you can give me. Thank you!



Whitney
 
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:welcome:

I think Hi8 tapes are still readily available. Free cameras are great cameras to learn with and abuse ;)
 
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This might be helpful to you: http://www.studio1productions.com/vid305.htm

I really don't know anything about that camera, but a quick google search shows that it was pretty much the top of the line Hi8 camera for several years, with an original street price of $4000 -- and apparently they can still fetch about $1200 or so...

Hi8 tapes should be fairly easy to come by, I would think any Target or Walmart would carry them, probably other places like Best Buy, Circuit City, Radio Shack, and Fry's would too. Or you could buy tapes online.

In many ways video and still photography are alike. They both require proper lighting, framing, etc... the most significant difference really is that video isn't a still photo. :) Otherwise, basically everything you already know about still photography applies as far as lighting, framing, shot composition, etc.

Hope that helps a bit.

:welcome:
 
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I had two of these... Great camera and shoots great video. They were about $4K when they first came out.

As Indie says, you can still pick up Hi8 tapes from just about anyplace that sells videotape. Wal-Mart definitely has them.

The only thing about ONE of mine was that I hadn't used it in almost a year and several of the diodes no longer worked. When I got it repaired, I was told that I really should power it up and shoot video at least once or twice a month.

filmy
 
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It was a great camera in its day.

Sony essentially created the Hi8 format as an answer to Beta. For a while
news shooters were using Hi8. It transfered well to 3/4 inch Betamax which
all news station were using and the cameras were smaller.

Whitney, my suggestion is to just start shooting. The tapes are cheap enough
and you can hook the camera to a monitor so you can see what you're doing.
It works just like any other video camera - it has manual controls for the iris,
shutter, focus and white balance and a microphone input so that makes it a
very professional camera.

I used mine for almost ten years. A solid machine.
 
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I knew I had something good but I didn't realize quite what it was. I'm pretty excited about this camera, and I'm definitely going to take it out to shoot. I don't really know what I'm doing with it, but hands on experimentation is the best way to learn, right?

Thanks for your feedback! I'm sure I'll be back with more questions soon enough.
 
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I have an old Proscan Hi-8 that I still use on very rare occasions. If I ever needed some shaky, handheld footage, I might still use it. For one project, I considered using it for black and white footage of an antagonist POV. And, yes, tapes are still readily available. The big reason I dropped this particular camera and went to the XL1s is it had little to no manual control. Yours doesn't look like it has this problem. That's a nice looking camera.
 
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