I'm not an expert in this, but I've always considered color bars useful for callibrating color and editing components, not for any impact on the actual raw footage quality.(posted 9284 days ago)Two things other things to consider... 1. The popular mini-DV cameras (Sony VX1000 and Cannon XL1) have the ability to produce color bars, although it is undocumented in the Sony. BUT, they are not true NTSC bars. I don't know how useful your post facilities will find them.
2. There is an argument for writing to your entire tape before shooting. If I am going to use the same mini dv tape with long breaks between shooting I will record the entire tape(s) over the nite before in black with no audio. The purpose is to lay down a continual time code on the tape. If you don't, the DV camera will start up at every significant shooting break (camera power down) with the time code reset at 0:00:00. If you intend to do batch capture off of your tapes--very useful in many NLE environments--not having a continual time code through the tape is a HUGE headache.
Incidently, you can also avoid this problem if you rewind slightly before shooting. You overwrite a bit of the last recording, but you'll pick up the time code where you left off. I'd just prefer to remove this extra bit of worry during shooting.
-- John P.S. Oh yeah, you definately should stick some true NTSC color bars on your final master after editing. Most reasonably good editing systems will let you do this.