I'm always very biased towards tapes ... Less compression than flash/DVD camcorders, easier to archive footage than hard disks, cheaper media than DVD camcorders, easy to trade footage, fewer strange file formats to confound your editing software.
A tape camcorder can be converted to a hard disk camcorder using a 3rd party addon (hard disk or software+laptop), which cuts out the capture process everyone hates in tape-based workflow. I recently shot four hours of footage at a Jonathan Coulton concert to send to Yahoo News on miniDV. FedEx was the best way to get it from GA to CA. Never underestimate the bandwidth of a stationwagon full of tapes :) -- Brian Richardson - http://whatthecast.com - http://siliconchef.com - http://dragoncontv.com - http://www.3chip.com
