HELP! Just got back from Belize.
 

Still trying to decide on a new camera.

I just got back from a 1-week shoot in Belize. We shot about 10 hours worth of footage on an Canon XL2.

Am I right in assumng that recording in DVCPRO HD is using about 1 gig per minute? If so, I'd need about 600 gigs to store the raw footage I shot.

If so, this would have been totally impractical. This was not a studio setting (we shot mostly in the rainforest), so I guess I'd be using a portable 30 gig in the field and then dumping to a series of hard drives at the hotel. Seems unwieldly.

Any other suggestions? I really like the new Panasonic, but I can't get my head around the "no HD tape option." I think I may have to forget 24p and go with the Z1.

HELP!

What do you mean, by "play" Barlow?

KW

Just seemingly has a little more selective focus. Hard to quantify...it's probably almost exactly the same DOF characteristics as the XL2 lens, but feels a little different. Not trying to make a hard claim on that.

Peter,
for Doc work and the HVX200, you should wait until March when there is a Firestore option 80 - 100 Gigs of continuous recording for less than 2000$
There will be more and more companies coming out with such...so dont frett...
or get a Canon H1

A few posts ago I mentioned that by the first quarter of 2006, the blue laser burners will allow you to store 50 gigs of information. This would be very good advice if only they would come out with 3X or higher ram disks as well. This way you can do you editing right from the disk itself.

The hard drives for the HVX200 will apparently be at least 100 GB and hence offer about four hours of DVCProHD recording in 720p/24 format. (Since that only uses 40% of the capacity per second of full DVCProHD.) So two of those would get you a whole day's worth of recording time, depending on how long your day is. But then you'd better be prepared to offload that data somewhere else before the next day's shoot, so you would need to get back to a hotel and do that. If you want to be able to go a few days without having to worry about archiving data, HDV arguably has an advantage in that regard.

Personally I think HDV is fine and will knock the socks off anything you could get out of an XL2, but the stock lens on the Sony HDV cameras isn't adequate if you need to zoom in on distant subjects. If you're used to shooting on an XL2 the XL-H1 seems like a logical choice, even if it is a bit pricey. As someone else said, it's not going to cost any more than an HVX200 with a couple of DTE recorders, so there's no cost advantage to the Panny camera. Plus the Panny DTE drives won't be available for another several weeks yet, so if you need something now that pretty much settles it.

On my new powerbook I got today there is a PC Card slot. Is that were a P2 card would go? I don't know much about either one!!

Yesiree, Bob.

Man I'm one step closer to the HVX!!