What if...
 

...your client wants to walk away at the end of the day with tape and you have an EX-1 or EX-3? Lets add that the shoot is a small crew and it's run and gun documentary work.

What gear would be required?

Ask them if they you can copy the files to their laptop or portable hard drive.

I make sure they understand the workflow. So far, most people I've dealt with have laptops and hard drives. Keep in mind that it's not always practical to carry a laptop all day and then break it out and spend an hour transferring footage. I've also taken a client's hard drive, transferred the footage and then delivered it a day or two later. Every project is different and some clients aren't familiar with a tapeless workflow.

If the client is doing the editing, tell them to spend some money on a small external hard-drive, very cheap nowadays, then explain to them that all the footage will be on the hard-drive at the end of the shoot.
2 advantages to this that you explain to the client

1) If they're doing the editing then all they have to do is plug the hard-drive into their pc and edit, no capturing to mess about with.

2) They can use the hard-drive again on another shoot instead of tapes, which means money saved for them. ie you charge x amount per day plus expenses,tapes being expenses.

Once the client gets used to this workflow then i'm sure that they'll be looking to use that workflow again, so hopefully that'll steer them in the direction of someone with a tapeless cam (you).

Paul.

It may depend on time and budget but you can:
Burn DL-DVD from laptop
Copy to external hard drive. There are bus powered versions if you prefer.
Copy to USB thumb drives

BTW ALL the above are better than handing off a tape IMHO because in each case you'll have a backup on your laptop in addition to handing the client a copy.

If you're recording in SQ, you can also double-record out the firewire port to a deck. I use the Sony GV-HD700 (about $1100). You can set it in the menu to record to card, tape, or both and it will control the deck along with the camera. Then you can hand them a tape but still have the files on card. Does not work in HQ mode.

All of the above are good current suggestions, just to add to this - what might eventually become 'the norm' (or certainly what Sony would recommend as best practice) is offload to a laptop/HDD and burn to Blu-ray for client copy and/or archive.

The Vaio AR-series are available right now with internal Blu-ray writer (as an option) - and of course include PCIexpress (SxS) card reader as standard.
http://vaio.sony.co.uk/view/ShowProd...y=VN+AR+Series

I'm also pretty sure we'll see a MBP with Blu-ray included announced/released in the next 6 months (maybe MacExpo in Oct?) or latest during Macworld in January. I expect Snow Leopard to include native blu-ray support from day one.

Cheers, Dave.