Sony Handycam CCD-TRV68 Camcorder - Silver

I have had this camera since 2001, bought it at Best Buy for around $900, mini dv's weren't around that much, had the camera believe it or not in my garage for about 4 years because of some family problems(divorce) and took it out finally, charged the battery and fired it up, son of a gun, it worked, I have a little photography business and wanted to include videography, I have successfuly shot 7 weddings with this sucker, it great, the only thin you have to watch out is the white balance (safe to keep it on manual white balance under a watchful eye) low light isn't bad always great to have some sort of an external light source. Some of the pro videographers may find this ridiculous but I needed to practice, its simple to transfer the video to PC and edit your video, nothing to it. As long as I have this baby I will work it till it goes out. Sony product do last a long time , there is no doubt about that, there customer service is probably the worst among any electronics manufacturer, its safer to buy a Sony product on ebay than a regular retail store, atleast the people on ebay will not rip you off. There are many after market accessories for this camera available at your local camera shop or even best buy, for eg. filters, l-brackets, video lights, aftermarket batteries etc etc.
Please not you will need ample light indoors, and outdoors you will need to keep an eye on the exposure settings.

This is a good camera for an old school analog style. The Hi8 is better quality than the standard 8mm. I absolutely love night shot! The features of this camera are a lot of fun. The quality is not as good as MiniDV, but that is to be expected. I find the picture to be quite good considering the price you can get this camcorder for now.

Sony Handycam CCD - TRV68
For its age this was one of the state of the art cameras available
Most manufacture dates are 2001 so it is after the modification date for the infamous Sony X-Ray Cameras.
This camera does not have the half on trick for Xray but using the correct 37 mm IR lenses you can get it to do Xray.
As far as using this camera to transfer your old Hi8 tapes to other media it works well.
It has an output jack that can be plugged into an in port on a pc or a television.
The battery life is about 4 hours using the standard battery and Hi8 tapes can be 60 to 180 minutes
This camera has a 460x zoom
If you are buying this camera to do xray you will need to invest around 50 dollars for the IR lenses
It does not work as well as the older model but it can be made to work
Hope this helps

I had this camcorder before the hing on the tape got stuck. I knew this was a good buy. I love this camera its not as sharp as the latest dvd's but it does give really good picture quality. It also has night vision which not a lot of camcorders have. Thanks again.

I would have given a good review of this camera, but in high humidity situations the computer chip that is the brains of the whole thing can blow and you have a five pound paperweight. There was a big news article recently about chips in certain video cameras (not just Sony) that go out in high temperature/humidity siuations because the chip is defective. While none of the camera manufacturers issued a recall, some were replacing the chip or the whole camera at no charge since is was defective to begin with. Sony will replace SOME of their cameras that have this problem but NOT the CCD TRV68. Mine went out after a rainstorm (high humidity) while taping our vacation in Georgia in June (high temperature). After repeated contacts with Sony's customer service they "offered" to fix it for $200 - what you can now buy a brand new one for. Sony has horrible customer service. This one is a turd.