Camera Choices for Event Production Company

[Jimmy Pierce]

Here's the run down. I work at a production company that holds a film making workshop on a yearly basis for adults with special needs. We have two workshops in California. The camera of choice is the Canon XH-A1 in both workshops. This is what our students are learning with. We've shot several types of videos that all turned out looking great. Once our students graduate the program, if they are capable enough to work in the industry, we give them the opportunity of working with a subsidiary production company that shoots content such as conferences, stage productions, company picnics, music videos, commercials, EPKs, red carpet events, graduations and possibly documentaries, etc.

Up until now, the subsidiary production company has been using the equipment in our workshop. Now, I am about to put together basic camera packages for the subsidiary company to own and operate. The Canon XH-A1 so far has been a great camera to work with for those shooting with it, myself included. But times are changing. Newer cameras have better features than this camera, are capable of shooting sharper pictures, and some need less lighting. Also the direction we are going are hard drive and card based recording, versus MiniDV tape.

There are several advantages to the cameras we have. First and foremost, our students are learning on these cameras, so making the transition into the professional world, there is less of a learning curve, because they are operating with the same equipment they learned with. Second, the camera's are cheaper in price and we know what they're capable of. Third, tape storage feels a lot safer than hard drive storage.

This takes a lot of thought for me, especially since newer cameras are more expensive than the camera we own, but have a lot of imagery advances over the XH-A1, given the gap between releases.

What would you suggest?

By the way, I am going to post this same thread in the other brand forums, because it's possible we could go with a different manufacturer.

Thanks for reading and hope it wasn't too long.

 

[Deniz Coker]

Once I went solid state, I never looked back. Logging and capturing is not something you will miss. The reliability and durability is better too in my opinion. I can cut back to clips and play them down like you would on a DVR, no rewinding tapes also no wear on tape heads and cassette carriages to get stuck. You eliminate tape libraries and decks and I personally like that. I haven't used Canons since the XL1 days, I did enjoy them back then. But Panasonic does have lots of options such as the HMC which is like a DVX. It's light weight, storage media is cheap and it's reliable. I like the HPX170 and above myself but you ask yourself, do you need all the features of that cam? P2 is also an expensive format but the cards last forever. An HMC is pretty cheap and gets the job done. Now one thing I'll say is I have a very specific workflow in which the media gets ingested. It's optimized around P2 media. This works for me and fits with my entire production pipeline, any extra freelance cameras, editors, blah blah blah, it's taken it's place in my pipeline. I do occasionally deal with the AVC intra format (HMC shoots on that, the HPX shoots in P2 format), and I've been able to integrate it into my workflow seamlessly when needed. Being completely tapeless this works for me. But you do seem fond of tape. There are HVX200s but I probably wouldn't go below a 200a. They were built for someone in your situation, who still had tape and was leaving it. A company I worked with got those to ease their transition then only used them with P2 cards and never looked back. It's a jump but a nice one. Not sure what the budget is, these are pretty affordable cameras. There are the bigger HPX cameras but I'm guessing those are out of your budget.