Firewire, Computers, and Cameras
 

Was talking to a friend of mine earlier this evening about firewire connections and Mac computers, and he mentioned that you should power up the camera before you power up the Mac. I've always done the opposite. Had the computer running, plug in the camera, then power the camera up.

If there any correct way for doing this? I've heard of problems when hot plugging Panasonic camera's, but I've never heard of anything happening to Canon based camera's.

The only thing I can say regarding this issue is the Canon Factory Service Center and Service Phone Support both stated that you should not "hot plug" the Canon H1.

They said the safe way is to only plug in the firewire into the H1 with the camera powered off.

When I asked how would plugging a 4-pin (no power) cause any harm, they reiterated that the factory still recommends having the power off when plugging in the firewire to the H1.

Firewire and USB were designed to hot plug, and I doubt the Canon recommendation is correct, but I'm not willing to test this using my $9,000 camera, so I turn the camera off before plugging or unplugging.

Best,
Christopher

Thanks for the replies. I decided to stick with what I've always done, which is plugging/unplugging with the camera turned off. Just seemed the most sensible thing to do.

And like Christopher said, I too am not willing to try with my $9000 camera! :-)

The problem with hot pluging is the cameras use 4 pin FW and if you make contact with the pins incorrectly positioned (which can happen through partial insertion) it will fry the camera. It happened a lot with some of the early Sony's.

4 pin firewire is a non-powered connection, just data. I find it really had to believe that hot swapping a cable with no (significant) power would fry anything. I have hotswapped pretty much every firewire device I have ever owned, with no issues.

Hi Brian. What you say is correct. I think the issue that some people have seen is that the cable shield (ground), which is terminated to the connector shell, gets inadvertantly connected to the signal pin(s) when the plug is fitted without enough care. If the interface is designed properly, then this shouldn't matter as the driver chips would be able to withstand an external short to ground indefinitely without damage. However, it seems that some cameras have a flaky design in this respect, so even a momentary misconnection can lead to permanent damage.

Shouldn't happen, but as mentioned earlier, it's an expensive camera to take the risk with.

Richard

It's happened to me - blew both the PC 6 pin port and the camera's 4 pin port. I was hotplugging as I would with USB having never heard of issues with firewire at that stage. This on the day or two I was to deliver some footage for a client. I had to purchase the cheapest mini dv cam on the market purely for capturing purposes (the camera still records no problem and I had a spare firewire port on the PC).

Since upgrading my camera (to a much more expensive model than the previous) I'm now using a firewire isolator - cost about £50-60 - well worth it!