I am shooting a project that calls for a smal, affordable, bullet-size camera with high resolution. I was looking at the Sony DXC-C33P but the $4-5,000 price tags are high considering the camera(s) will be mounted in cars that will be racing. The car could possibly wreck and destroy the camera(s). Replacing those things would be expensive...

Could someone refer me to a small, light weight camera that is close to the size of the DXC C33P, shoots in color and resolution? Could I get presentable and professional quality from one of the bullet cams I can buy on Ebay or should I go for something specifically made for what I'm doing?

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35471

Perhaps this is something? It's cheaper, small and features a
removable harddisk which might be more durable than tape,
although it will be perhaps banged around pretty much?

Don't know about resolution...

My friend and i bought a few small cams off of ebay. they are around 2x2x1. the picture looks fine for us, but i dont know how pro it is. it looks fairly nice on a 40" tv though. that was always the easiest way to video the cars as we were driving/racing. we just recorded it on my vx2100 and it worked great.

toshiba also makes a couple of nice remote head icecube cameras with 3-chip sensor arrays, similar to the sony you listed... you'll still need to come up with an mic/preamp and a video recorder of some kind.

i bet that there is a *huge* gap in picture quality between those nice icecube units and the cheapo single ccd lipstick cameras you typically see, tho.

what kind of a racecar are you putting 'em in? if there isn't much of a budget, here is what my incar camera system is based on: http://www.jackbrown.us/camera/

I'm going to be mounting the cameras and using them in/on different cars. My friends have some really nice/fast cars like Supras, M3's, RX-7s, Cobras, Vettes, GT-R's, DSM's, Evo's, STi's, etc.. I'll be shooting in some of those when the weather gets better.

The 3CCD icecube cams are what I'd buy if I was on a bigger budget but I'm not there yet. so I'll settle for one of single ccd lipstick cams and some of the cameras they use to get in car footage in nascar..

what i use for mounting the remote camera head unit is the full-on roll cage mount from i/o port racing: http://www.ioportracing.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=CM&Category_Code=CM

if all you are going to do is roundy-round racing, you can mount a cheapo dv camera up to that, and it'll work great.

if you are at the drag strip, tho, launching the car could skip the tape on a camera that's mounted to the roll cage... which is why i had to move to the remote camera head you are talking about.

elmo sells some high-end lipstick cameras, but i think that they are made by toshiba.

where in the ohio area are you located? im in the cincinnti area and we have all those cars and more.