[Warren Anderson]

Hi Gigi
Thank you so much, I am based in Johannesburg, but shoot all over the country and 90% of our work is weddings and we also shoot music videos and conferencing etc. I really enjoy my trusty old PD170’s and you’re 100 % correct about the NP-F970 batteries being so fantastic. I need all the help I can get re HD – We were in Egypt over Christmas and New Year and I recorded 3 hours of HD on my small Rollei HD cam which uses H264 compression, dumped the clips on my Mac Quad Pro – took 12 hours of rendering, so this has me a bit worried ito post production, although I believe capturing in pro res is a lot quicker. I spoke to one of the local Panasonic guys re their AG HMC 150P which is a lot cheaper than the Sony Z5 and the NX5 – the Z5 uses MPeg 2 compression whereas the NX5 uses the new AVCHD Mpeg4 as does the Panasonic range of cameras, and hence much better quality. He tells me that AVCHD is definately the way to go and that the Sony Z5 is old technology. Is the Z5 quality also much better than the PD170 ?
I would really prefer to remain with tape as we often shoot 3-4 weddings in a week and end up with around 14 hours of tape and at 12gigs per hour would require 168 gigs of storage per week if I go tapeless, so would have to look at a Raid system. Many thanks really appreciate your input and will read through all the posts to try and gain more insight.

[Warren Anderson]

Hi Gigi
Thanks, it’s great to read your posts. I have been shooting with two PD 170’s for years and am also looking at going HD as South Africa is going HD crazy at the moment. Wanted to know if you are still using the Sony Z5’s or could anyone suggest Panasonic or Canon cameras in the $ 4000 range.
We edit on Final Cut Pro and also need to investigate workflow etc using digital.
We shoot around 100 weddings per year, sometimes four over a weekend, and I have always preferred having the tape backup copies, so not sure how recording to CF or SD cards will affect my postproduction workflow.
What would be the best cameras to invest in ?