Video Camera recommendations?

Rob,
I've been using sony for some time. I doubt you will find anything that does any better. Most nicer cameras us sony components.
Decent ambient lighting will help while filming. For the night shot, during editing, I just turn it to black and white.

HardDrive or tape, depends on the compression of the harddrive. Are thinking along the lines of a DVR?

Ahh, I never thought of the compression.. Man, depending on how they do it, it could make a fellah really sad.. I was wondering how they got 30 hours of vid onto the drive..

I figure most of the vid would be viewed from laptop and probably edited to a minor degree. The content would be family stuff year round, with a focus on haunt stuff around Oct.

Also, I realized a lot of my shots are wide angle. I did a ghetto lens on the last camera I used, but if I could get a camera with a wide angle on it, it would be cool.

Hey man,
With the budget you have, really, just get a good consumer grade mini DV camera. I use canon GL1 and XL1's myself, but they are not of that price range really. You can get a VERY good camera for what your needing at walmart. They have a JVC mini dv for around 200.00 you can get a good canon for around 500.00.
Sony has the awesome "night shot" option, I have 2 sony's I use for other things.
When shooting at night if you want it to be as realistic as possible its all in the lighting of the project. I have many production lights and some lighting is as simple as colored flood lights, see on screen you only see what the camera see's so there for take advantage of that. Using blue, red and green you can capture an awesome creepy look, its all in how its distributed.

Take care!

Oh yeah also, in the editing process if you use a good editing system you can inhance and add to the picture with editing filters. I use AVID and also for consumer stuff I use Sony VEGAS, both are great programs with tons of features, just have fun with it!

Hope this helps!

I have a Cannon digital ZR50. I love it. Low light and dark it works great, if on the correct setting. Of course I need to use a tripod at night to get the best effect from it.