HPX-250a, mini-P2 and the future?

[Jarek Zabczynski]

I'm a little concerned with where large P2 is going. I personally like it as well as the form factor, SD cards can get lost/misplaced easiser. Since Panny is intoducing P2 in an SD form factor, how long do you think Panny will continue with the large oness? Where does that leave current hardware? I know they will have an adapter but does that mean they are going mini across the line?

Where does that leave the next iteration of the HPX-250? Would they switch it to mini at this point?

[Barry_Green]

Their newest camera introduction, the HPX600, uses the large card slots, and presumably would rely on the adapter for the MicroP2 cards.

I would expect a handheld camera to likely use the smaller cards directly, as one of the benefits they touted for MicroP2 was that they could now make smaller P2 cameras. If there were an HPX250a, I would expect it to use the large cards, as an "a" model is usually a revision to the existing physical manufacturing. But I would expect that we could see a small P2 cam like a P2-ized version of an HMC40 or something someday, and if so, that it would use the smaller cards.

[Bassman2003]

General question about the P2 adapter and Micro P2: Will these product have a different pricepoint approach? Meaning, will micro-P2 be lower cost than a large P2 card?

I am looking at the HPX-250 but I shoot a lot of long events, so the price of P2 memory has always excluded me from using these cameras. Would rather stay with the best image quality of the HPX-250 rather than the 160 unless the difference is not that large.

Thanks

[Barry_Green]

Probably too early to tell, I don't recall them making any price predictions on the MicroP2 cards. I would think that there would be some decrease, as in general the cards have come down tremendously since introduction and MicroP2 is I think about a year away, so it would seem reasonable to expect lower prices but that's just a guess.

[Bassman2003]

Thanks Barry. I did not know MicroP2 was still a year away.

[rzr219]

Price if not really a concern as much as the current P2 stats. from what I have read the newer P2 card will be faster correct? If so will this allow the possibly of the 250 being able to have a firmware update that will do 1080 @ 60p? I think the reason it does not now is because the current P2 cant handle the faster write data. Is this something that might happen?

[Barry_Green]

I would never expect any modification to an existing camera to add new features. Granted, they were able to do that on the AC160 and as a paid upgrade on the AF100, but you still can't expect it. The P2 cameras are different, and sometimes they can do things and sometimes they can't. So don't count on it.

[timbook2]

I would never expect any modification to an existing camera to add new features. Granted, they were able to do that on the AC160 and as a paid upgrade on the AF100, but you still can't expect it. The P2 cameras are different, and sometimes they can do things and sometimes they can't. So don't count on it.

They did however charge for some sort of upgrade on the 160 and I get a lot of responses from 160 users that autofocus was drastically improved. Since both share the same glass, why no such fix for the 250 ??????

[Barry_Green]

The 250 got the exact same updates. In the 250 it uses different hardware and was able to be modified solely by firmware.