Help me buy camcorder for genealogy work?

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

Me and my sister are getting into genealogy.

My Mom who has been dead now for 10 yrs was born in a
small town in Iowa abt two hrs north of Hannibal.

There are only abt three people left who knew my mother
as a young woman. They are in their 90s.

So we drove up to this small town Sat and scouted down
many VERY old cemeteries and grave stones

Rather than taking a paper notebook and trying to jot
down notes and interviews with people it occurred to me
that maybe if I owned a digital camcorder this would be
a lot easier. I could shoot film and talk in the
background and just say what we were looking at.
Basically use the camcorder as a capture device.... an
electronic notebook.

Then I could transcribe to text from the video at my
leisure back home. Good idea?

If yes..... any advice on what type of digital
camcorder to buy? I don't want to spend a ton of money
cause technology changes so fast. I do want digital
video tho

Is miniDV still the best value right now? The tapes are
cheap and have great capacity, correct?

Advice?