Panasonic PQ or Sony Premium?
 

Hey I was wondering... which is better? I am thinking of buying a GL2 and the owner has used Sony Premium's previously. I hear that I shouldnt change brands of tape in a camera.

Is Sony Premium just as good as Panasonic PQ?

or do i need Sony Excellence to achieve that quality?

thanks
-andy

Tapes shouldn't differ in quality, but I don't know much about color differences. I know different film stock brands differ mostly on color rendition but I don't know if the same applies for MiniDV tapes. =P

I think that the best thing to do is to try using the same tape the original owner was using just to be sure there aren't any problems down the line, unless the Sony Premiums are more expensive than you'd like, I use Panasonic tapes myself because I can get them almost anywhere.

If you really want to use different tapes, then maybe you can or can get the original owner (assuming you haven't bought it yet) to send the camera in for cleaning and checkup by Canon. Then, once you get it back, you can switch tapes I believe.

The simplest solution is to just go ahead and use the new tapes after a cleaning with a cleaning cassette and pray nothing goes wrong. If it hasn't had much use, I don't think it will be much of a problem. Good luck! =)

All mini-DV tapes give you the same quality (ignoring dropouts) as the digital video is stored as a bunch of 1s and 0s (with error correction code). If enough 1s and 0s fail to be read back, you will get dropouts.

It's arguable as to whether or not X brand of tape gives less dropouts than other tape. If you look through this forum there are lots of posts on this.

Andy

Maybe it will help you if I tell of an experiance I had last week. I picked up a previously owned XL1s. I ran some test footage using the normal tape I use in my JY-HD10U, which is JCV DVC DVM60ME. The footage showed pixelation/mosaics and I knew that the heads needed to be cleaned.

I ran the cleaner, then not wanting to use the same tape to test it again, (may be contaminated) I grabbed another and ran footage again. This time there was no problem, and the footage was fine. But, when I unloaded the tape, I noticed that I had used a Sony Premium tape. Ran the test again with another new JVC tape, and still had pixelation/mosaics. Cleaned it again and the problem was gone.

The point is that the sony tape recorded it fine without further cleaning and the JVC tape did not. So at least in the Canon I will stay with the Sony Premium tapes. They are perhaps just a little better.

I hope that this helps.

Mike

thanks for the response guys it has helped

my next question though is..... if anyone knows...
what's the difference between Sony Premium and Sony Excellence?