Hey there...

Stupid question, but...

People have been asking me about 2 cameras for weddings and I have had to turn them down because I am basically a one man operation. Now I realized that a friend of mine who also shoots has a camera and that I can just hire him to be the second camera for me. I am going to be getting the HX A1 in a couple of weeks. He has a Panasonic something or another, not sure, that does not do HD. If I where to shoot in HD with my camera then downconvert when importing into Avid, would the footage match with his camera? Or would I need to have someone shoot with the same camera in order for the second camera to work?

You can probably get it close, especially if you use one of the PANLOOK presets that Steven Dempsy created. The rest you can likely accomplish in post. It won't be perfect, mind you, but close enough that your clients may not notice.

What is this Panlook you speak of?

It's a custom preset that you can load into your camera to produce a certain look...in this case, I believe it is intended to mimic the look of the Panasonic AG-DVX100 or something similar or perhaps the HVX. I'm not sure which. The most current version is called PANALOOK2. You can research and download it from this forum. It's in this thread:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/canon-xh-series-hdv-camcorders/126811-xh-custom-presets-download-library-copy.html

Once you download it, load it onto the SD card in your A1 and use that preset when you are shooting along with your friend's Panasonic SD camera.

Good to know.