I am currently in the market for a new hd camera. I currently use an xdcam camera live on air about 5 days a week. I have never edited any footage from the camera. I love shooting with the camera and it seems to have great quality. I am currently considering the Sony PDW F350 or a used 700A HDCAM camera. They are both about the same price. I know that the HDCAM camera has a higher bit rate but the XDCAM is a newer technology. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

a thing to think about budget-wise are the lenses, 3/2 HD Glass is a lot more expensive then 1/2 glass.

I was in the same boat as you.. except we were deciding between the f350, and the hdcam730s (I believe that was the model).

We actually did tests between the cameras and found them pretty similar.. the thing that sold us on the f350 was of course the discs, and the 24p feature, not to mention over/undercranking, thumbnail screen,, etc.. the list goes on =)

If you intend to do any of your own post production with HDCAM you'll need to hire or buy a VTR. With XDCAM the camera can act as a deck.

The 700 is a pretty old camera. Like Alister mentioned the HDCAM camera requires a deck. The 700 cannot do progressive scan modes either. For HDCAM the most demand is for cameras like the 750 or 900. I'm not sure that the 700 would be desired by many productions. I could be wrong though.

The 700 is a pretty old camera.

The HDW-700A was a newer version of the 700. I could be wrong but I believe that the 700 was released in the end of 1998 and the 700A in mid 1999.

The HDW-700A was a newer version of the 700. I could be wrong but I believe that the 700 was released in the end of 1998 and the 700A in mid 1999.

That's about right. 700 outputted 1035 line standard...was the first HD camcorder ever, afaik. 700A updated to 1080.

I shot a really bad independent feature fall of 1999 with the 700A, over the course of a month. It was amazing at the time, seeing the image on the monitor. This was when the 900 was near to fruition, and the idea of shooting 24fps on an HD camera sounded very cool. I didn't understand framerates then as well as I do now, but they were telling me what we were shooting in 30i on the 700A was going to be transferred to film, so it would get the "filmlook 24fps" treatment then.

The movie never did, it was a "pending distribution" thing. Wound up looking like a Mexican soap opera. Yuk.