Sony, Canon, Panasonic or Mix for Wedding Video Kit.

[Matt_H]

I've been a video producer for a small production company for about two years now, and I'm looking into doing more wedding / event videography as a side gig. Currently I own a GH2 with a few cheap lenses, and I borrow the companies HMC150. (It's a family company so we pretty much share gear) I'm looking for some small B cams to fill in for multi cam events, and will eventually get another traditional Camcorder of my own for an A cam (Around HMC 150 range or higher) Right now I'm looking at Canon xa10s, Panasonic HMC 40's, or Sony MC50U's. The U's are the cheapest and have the least manual control but are supposed to have fantasic auto controls and will be used for unmanned wide shots or creative angles more often than not. The canon's look fantastic but will end up costing an extra grand in a two cam package. And the HMC40's seem well enough, and would match my current HMC setup quite well I imagine, but have a smaller chip and I'm not sure about low light performance....also no provided xlrs or shotgun...Should I stick with Panny's or go with Sony or canon, or would a mixed bag work? How hard would it be to match the canon's or sony's with the panasonics? 24p vs 60i isn't really a big deal to me since the average customer would pick 60i in a side by side comparison anyway.

 

[brynsank]

I own an XA10 and while I can't speak to the others, I can say the XA10 is pretty fantastic for the $. Given that you already have a GH2 for low light (and I would assume it is your primary camera) the XA10 is a great second or third. The facial tracking is pretty good for auto metering on lock off shots. Battery life with the large size battery is excellent and record time is great too. Love the fact that it has internal memory plus two SD slots. Also the colour temp can be dialed in by degrees Kelvin which is fantastic for a cam in that price range. Makes matching white balance with my other higher end cams nice and easy. Only downside is the rattle from the audio switches, but I only ever use mine locked off so it's not an issue for me. Otherwise I would just put a bit of gaff over the switches to stop them rattling. All in all it's pretty fiddly when you want full manual control but so are all cameras in that price range.