[Robert Sullivan]

Ai Lads, The Camera Rebellion is on…I love the idea of modular…but more important would be cheap media that is somewhat archival….like SDHC or CF cards. If Convergent Design and AJA can make after market units that record data and store it on these cards, why, in the name of Sweet Jesus, can’t Panasonic take the cards/codec system of the HMC150 and stuff it in the rear ends of the HVX300, 500, 2000, 2700, 3000, and 3700. Oh, my goodness, …It would be ….Err…just like Betacam days….Cheap archival media shot with really great cameras that sit properly on your shoulder.
Sony, Sony, Sony….Remember, you came up with Betacam…Those were glorious days…Everybody in the entire video world used your equipment…Well, you could do that again, if you just came to your senses and put SDHC and CF card in “Anything you make”…EX1, EX3, EXDCam (keep your codec and get rid of those disks and SxS cards). I wonder how great the image from a SRW 9000 series camera head would look recorded onto a well made Sony CF card system…Red records to CF cards…Why not Sony? I’ll bet somewhere deep in the Sony research caverns are flash cards systems that will record stable, beautiful images from F23s and F35s right now. This thread is depressing because it shows our equipment “solutions” are in disarray. But it also shows that many Cinematographers are digging in their heels until the manufactures come up with what we need and want. That is a good sign. We are awaking from our dogmatic slumbers.

[Robert Sullivan]

Erich, Tom, and Kevin….Your are soooo… correct in your equipment assessments….As an.. err…elder camera/sound person, I would like to see two products that I could actually lift off the the ground to my shoulder where a properly balance professional camera should be.

1. A Panasonic HD-300 A with the H264 codec that uses the sd cards that power the little Panny
150 camera.. Only God knows why an $8500 camera needs a billion dollars worth of P 2 cards to keep it running on the low budget stuff that camera will be good at.

2. A Sony EX-4 (that sits like a proper camera balanced perfectly on your shoulder) with the same boring H264 codec that takes those same cheap, dull, dependable little SD cards.

Transfer the SD cards to PR 422 for editing and put the cheap archival SD cards on the shelf…I would trust data lasting on those cards more than data lasting on any hard drive.

Ciao, Sully