which camera under the circumstances

sharky

sharky

Active member
I will be shooting a documentary in Peru for 2+ months starting in may. I also plan to do some of the editing down there, probably amassing anywhere from 40 to 80 hrs. of footage. I have a dvx 100b but have pretty much come to the conclusion that I need to shoot in Hd. I'm intrigued by the hvx but am concerned with storage problems considering the amount of space the media takes up. Anyway, looking for opinions as to what might be the best camera to shoot doc with considering space, compatability with NLE's, lighting (mostly natural) and of course, the final image. (ALso considering HDV cams like JVC 110. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Sharky
 
Take a look at the Sony v-1 hdv camera. It's hdv and shoots to tape, and has a nice filmlike look in 24p. There are some posts on it in other cameras section.
 
Clearly understand: if you shoot hdv, you ARE NOT shooting in real intraframe HD. Under the circumstances, there are very valid arguments for shooting to tape.
I've used the HVX200 in Madagascar and shot to miniDV tape. HDV tape would
be better.

But the HDV stuff is a necessary evil sometimes until the price/memory ratio changes much more on the P2 cards. Just my humble 2 cents...
 
Go for either the V-1 from sony or A1 from Canon. Be aware that the V-1 is reporting some problems in PAL 25p mode. If you're shooting NTSC, or 24p, however, it looks fine.

If you want to go HVX, which is the better cam (in my opinion, of course), you should get a Firestore FS-100 and a windows laptop with firewire and a big external HD (for two months, I would suggest a 500gig or maybe even a 1tb.). Install on it the free P2 viewer for picture viewing. Of course, this is not very portable bu you should be able to carry everything with you with a PORTA-BRACE backpack. Overall costs for this setup? About 8 500 USD.

Also, at the end of the day, just do a downconversion to DV tape to keep as archive.
 
Peru, huh. High altitude, means avoid weight! I shoot in the mountains a lot and have this setup:
HVX,
2x8GB,
2 small USB-OTG disks with 80GB each.
Manfrotto 501 tripod,
Formatt mattebox with Pol, grad ND and ND filters (all 4x4 or 4x5,25),
1x5400 + 2x5600mA batteries

This setup allows me to hike, bike and ski when packed in my custommade backpack. Additionally I have the laptop, still camera and about 1TB of diskspace in a Crumpler backpack which stays in the hotel. So for me that works fine. But 80hrs of HD? Wow, that´s 80 HDV tapes which ammasses to about $ 800.
Pretty hard to beat that with the HVX especially when you want redundant backups.

Of course, if you want to shoot water, motion, fire etc and also like variable framerates, no choice. But otherwise I would honestly say the A1 from Canon might be a good choice. It has ergonomic limitations and sound limitations, but for a doc it should do fine IMO.
 
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