durability

[Bill Ravens]

BEWARE the sticky residue left by duct tape in warm weather. Once it gets on your fingers, it will contaminate every optical surface for 50 meters around. Gaffers tape works much the same, without the melting glue of duct tape.

[Chris Hurd]

Here, here.

Y'all know that Gaffer's tape was invented by Ross Lowell, founder of Lowell Lights, and one of the first XL1 users ever (December 1997).

Trival Pursuit Silver Screen Edition Champ,

[Adrian Douglas]

Well there you go, there's no argueing with a Trival Pursuit Silver Screen Edition Champ. It's not a problem I can across in the wilds of the NZ and Canadian alpine landscapes.

[Bill Ravens]

ahhh...to live in a place where one can leave a CD on the dashboard and come back to find it still playable.

[John Klein]

As much as I like my xl1S, if you are "going into the bush," I might go for a sony. If you are backpacking, weight counts. On the other hand if you are going with some paid help or the like, let them carry it!

I remember cutting toothbrushes, getting dried food and anything else to avoid extra weight. Call me a wuss, but I'd carry the Canon if that were about all I had to carry (no tent, food, water, sleeping bag...).

The other thing is battery power. I don't know about the aftermarket batteries, but I believe that you will get more life out of the sony batteries/units. So if you must carry a dozen batteries, you will get more run time from a sony 900 or even the vx2k.

As for durability, the rule is... just don't drop it. They can take just about all "normal" wear and tear.

The real key is shooting/critique/adjust/shoot/.../.../... I still find myself changing the settings a little here and there. But the most important thing is learning what your camera takes to achieve proper exposure.

Yes, gaffer's tape is a true blessing. As JoPhoto mentioned, I had been told that for trekking the Sony (specifically the pd 150) might have an advantage for being lighter with longer battery life.
However, I see the XL1 as having a real advantage in terms of being more versatile and customizable to a range of shooting conditions.
JC

[Adrian Douglas]

The simple but expensive answer to that on JC is you need 2 cameras. The XL1 and a XM/GL1. Add a beachtech to a GL1 and you've basically got a PD150(I know the Pd150 is DVCAM, yadda yadda yadda.) with 20x zoom and it will complement your XL1 footage nicely. I'm hoping to have an XM1 buy the end of the year to throw into a water housing and for on my snowboard where the XL1's bulk can make desents a litle hairy.

[Greg Matty]

Adrian,

Where did you find an underwater housing for your GL-1?

I looked into Ewa-Marine for one for my XL-1, but I think they went under (no pun intended).

A friend who has his own dive show in Canada recommended the Ikelite series. They are the real deal and they have the price to prove it. $5000 or there abouts. Also, the last time I looked, they only had housings for Sony models?

Please post any information you have on this. Thanks.

Greg Matty

[Peter Koller]

Greg,

here is a link to the ewa-marine site. they still have an underwater housing for the XL1 that goes 10m deep.

http://www.ewa-marine.de/English/e-start.htm

click on camcorderlist pick Canon and so on. The housing is called the VXL.


and here you get something to go down to the Titanic:

http://www.aquavideo.com/htmlhsg/canxl1.htm

Cheers,

[Adrian Douglas]

Greg,
I haven't got an XM1 yet. That and the waterhousing are later in the year. Gotta get a new Mac first.

[Greg Matty]

Peter,

Do you have any experience with your second recommendation? The Ewa products seem a little flimsey, but I should probably use one before I get to critical.

Adrian,

Which model of Mac are you looking at? Can you wait until July? We should, and better, see much faster hardware at the next Macworld. I am waiting.

Greg Matty

[Adrian Douglas]

Greg, I'm looking at a custom built DP1Ghz Mac. Yeah, I can wait, I was looking at buying July, August, then the XM1/housing in Oct/Nov in time for the winter snowboarding season. Maybe I should have a rethink, and get the XM1 first ay?

[Peter Koller]

Greg,

no experience with it. I just knew the website.

Cheers,

[Greg Matty]

Adrian,

I went for the custom build option but won't do that again. It is just too easy to do it myself. The VAR I went with did a great job and I would recommend them without hesitation. Installing ATA drives and RAM is just so easy, I don't want to pay a $1,000 premium for the service.

Have you actually taped your project yet? Unless you need a new mac for other reasons, don't buy it until you are ready to edit. If it takes you a couple of months to get everything on tape, you might see yet another upgrade to the Mac hardware that you would not have been able to buy before you finished taping. At Macworld Tokyo, Apple "ALLEGEDLY demoed at least" dual 1.4ghz G4's running on a 400mhz bus. This is straight from macosrumors.com which doesn't lend it much credibility, but certainly faster hardware must be in the pipeline. I am still fantasizing about dual 1.6ghz G5's, but I said that just before the January Macworld and all we got was a bump from 867mhz to 1ghz. Whoopy big deal. ;)

Greg Matty

[Adrian Douglas]

With the stuff I shoot, you usually end up with hundreds of hours of footage to sort through so it's better to do a kind of offline edit as you go. I've got a PC/DV500 that I've benn using for a couple of years and I've had enough of it's reliability(ie lack of it).

The good but bad thing about the computer industry is no matter what you buy and when you buy it, there will always be bigger better faster more on the market a week later.

I hear you about building it yourself and I have no problems with that. Maybe I'll just get the bare bones model and go from there.