DigitalAperture
New member
Recently I was using the XHA1 paired up with a firestore. The shoot was a concert where I was in tight areas and being bumped into often. After pulling the footage off the firestore, I found the footage was cutting in and out and I lost alot of footage due to bumping the firewire cable on the back of the camera. Its horrible placement for the 1394 connection!
So I pulled my camera apart in search of a better way!
After an afternoon of planning and machining this is what I came up with! First off, I wanted a far more robust connector other than the original 4pin firewire. I had an old PCI card that I stole a 6pin 1394 connector from.
.jpg](https://www.dvxuser.com/data/attachments/50/50062-f940b461479cb4788652f3469d75a553.jpg?hash=-UC0YUectH "image[1](1).jpg")
Next I had to come up with a way to mount this to the camera.
.jpg](https://www.dvxuser.com/data/attachments/50/50077-901523b42500969bc3d7d18bb0b1dfee.jpg?hash=kBUjtCUAlp "image[3](1).jpg")
.jpg](https://www.dvxuser.com/data/attachments/50/50091-c8d8b37316cc244b1df4fd64533061f9.jpg?hash=yNizcxbMJE "image[4](1).jpg")
![image[6].jpg](https://www.dvxuser.com/data/attachments/50/50107-f33243dc8afff0ee324d1a318ecb31c0.jpg?hash=8zJD3Ir_8O "image[6].jpg")
After milling out a small piece of aluminum to house the connector, all that was left was to wire it up to the main camera connector board!
.jpg](https://www.dvxuser.com/data/attachments/50/50137-394269af83ad281ecfefb634dfe87e85.jpg?hash=OUJpr4OtKB "image[2](1).jpg")
![image[5].jpg](https://www.dvxuser.com/data/attachments/50/50151-3656c99d215ea15aa962d917d5b075a3.jpg?hash=NlbJnSFeoV "image[5].jpg")
![image[7].jpg](https://www.dvxuser.com/data/attachments/50/50168-68e2412c7d4e2b6e9c1d4c2f32b8f7a6.jpg?hash=aOJBLH1OK2 "image[7].jpg")
![image[8].jpg](https://www.dvxuser.com/data/attachments/50/50182-19207098a32d652b9b2e7ab3cb36f888.jpg?hash=GSBwmKMtZS "image[8].jpg")
All said and done, it works great and the placement is perfect! If I ever go to sell this camera, it will be easy to remove my mods and put it back to original!
![image[1].jpg](https://www.dvxuser.com/data/attachments/50/50197-295b2a16b7155126fbde2b2d5f78249c.jpg?hash=KVsqFrcVUS "image[1].jpg")
![image[3].jpg](https://www.dvxuser.com/data/attachments/50/50215-119d910b1440ca888d754cc70dba8a87.jpg?hash=EZ2RCxRAyo "image[3].jpg")
![image[4].jpg](https://www.dvxuser.com/data/attachments/50/50227-6ac931225bafd8d086c0e89ac0bab806.jpg?hash=askxIluv2N "image[4].jpg")
Many more mods to come!
So I pulled my camera apart in search of a better way!
After an afternoon of planning and machining this is what I came up with! First off, I wanted a far more robust connector other than the original 4pin firewire. I had an old PCI card that I stole a 6pin 1394 connector from.
Next I had to come up with a way to mount this to the camera.
After milling out a small piece of aluminum to house the connector, all that was left was to wire it up to the main camera connector board!
All said and done, it works great and the placement is perfect! If I ever go to sell this camera, it will be easy to remove my mods and put it back to original!
Many more mods to come!
We have an old XHA1 where the firewire jack broke on it about a year or so after getting it. Our solution was just to buy a cheaper HDV camera to import footage. But it would still have been nice to have a working firework jack on the A1 itself.
