[Bill Church]

I’m aware results aren’t going to be ideal. I’m shooting for usable in those situations, not good. If I had my way I’d have a lighting grid set up in the auditorium with everything lit just as I want it. As it stands, I just wanna be able to see the speaker without gaining up to +12db. I appreciate your advice as well as everyone’s else’s though. I ended up recommending the XF300 to the higher ups after reexamining what I’ll be shooting and realizing an ENG style camcorder with a long telephoto is going to make my shoots considerably easier. I’d much prefer to work with 50Mbps MPEG-2 in post as well.

[Bill Church]

I wish I had access to those cameras but unfortunately they’re from a prior gig. I’d absolutely love to replace the XL2 at this new job with an EX3 but it’s way out of budget.

[Bill Church]

Thanks for your input. I should clarify: I absolutely plan to upgrade our editing infrastructure if we upgrade. I’ve been shooting HD since 2008 across a range of cameras (Sony EX3 and Panny HPX-500 most recently) and I wouldn’t dream of trying to work with that footage on a Core Duo in a 32bit NLE. That’s why I’d like to have $600-$840 set aside for Creative Cloud. Storage I’m not terribly concerned with, we’ve got ample server space and HDDs are cheap these days. It’s something I’ll run by our IT regardless though, thanks for reminding me.

Now to your point on clip length: THANK YOU! That is absolutely a concern I will need to take into consideration. That actually may be the deal breaker for me. Stopping an interviewer for a moment every 12 minutes to hit record again could annoy folks and that would certainly create some disconcerting breaks in conferences (though I suppose I could stitch them together by cutting in the current powerpoint slide during the breaks).

I don’t know that the option is off the table now but I’m certainly going to look heavily into other routes now.

[Bill Church]

I feel a little dumb for not having tried Flip4Mac, I’ve been using that for years on my Macbook. I’ll let you know if it works. In the meantime we got this show done by re-encoding the file as a series of png’s and importing them as a sequence. I’ll remember that Quicktime trick to, I’ve a feeling this is not the last time I’ll be running into this problem. Thank you.

[Bill Church]

Alright thank you very much. We can’t try it until we get a Firewire cable long enough to extend from our rack to the Mac Pro that has OnLocation on it but when it gets here from Monoprice I’ll report back to let you know if worked. Thank you.

[Bill Church]

You guys are awesome. Lot of good information here. Thank you to Rick for pointing me to the Zacuto shootout. That was very impressive, I was very impressed by the 7D and pleased to know the $900 cheaper T2i produces identical video. The others I’d likely pass on due to price or lack of formats I need to be able to shoot in. I’m definitely looking forward to the 2011 shootout next month to see how the AF100 and FS100 stack up against each other and cameras I can’t afford. As for the F3, my god I would love one. I was drooling when I watched Sony’s Pre-NAB reveal of it. Unfortunately it’s likely to be some time before I have eighteen grand to drop on a camera and a set of Zeiss prime lenses =D My school is actually getting one for next semester, I’m rather bummed I won’t be around to play with it.

As for the editing rig I’m ok with going PC only. I love FCP, it’s my NLE of choice and what I’ve been editing with since I stepped up from tape-to-tape, and I’m chomping at the bit for FCPX but the cost of the hardware is just too prohibitive. I won’t buy an iMac because I hate non-upgradeable hardware with a passion and the $2500 starting price for a Mac Pro is far too prohibitive; particularly when I can build a very powerful, and overclockable, i7 Sandy Bridge rig for $1500. Plus I love playing with After Effects and the ability to easily roundtrip between AE and Premiere is a huge boon, so I’ll get by. Thank you for the suggestions though. I’ll look into Vegas as well.

Seth the ability to capture uncompressed footage from the AF100 and the FS100 is very appealing but there’s no way I’ll be able to swing the cash for one of those cameras and a $1000 external box to capture the video plus another $300-$600 for the SSDs. So either way I’m looking at compressed footage for a awhile. In fact the more I think on it the more I’m convincing myself kitting out either of those camera’s could be prohibitively expensive…. Hmm. I should also note renting really isn’t an option, Maine is sort of barren in the way of places to rent any decent gear. Might be an option one day if I ever get to New York or the San Fran bay area like I plan, but right now I’m bouncing back and forth between six month stints on a cruise ship and 2-4 months in Maine.

Thank you Shawn for pointing out Mr. Bloom’s comparisons. I’m watching them right now. Maybe they’ll sway me to spend all my savings =)

Again thanks a bunch guys. Any more advice you can give is very welcome. I think right now I’m leaning towards a 7D or a T2i, depending on if I decide an extra $900 is worth a better still camera or not, and spending a couple grand kitting it out and dealing with it’s shortcomings. Like I said though this purchase
is a ways off so I’ll likely continue researching right up until next year.