I was a LONG way from home last December when my AX-2000 went belly-up on me. Due to luggage costs and customs issues, I didn't take a backup camera, so I lost a day of shooting and ended up renting a camera locally (an NX5, since there would be no learning curve) to finish the job. That made me think, "Hmm, maybe I should start having a qualified Sony technician do an annual maintenance on my camera."

Sounds like a reasonable idea, but since then I haven't found any camera shops in any city I've visited that does any sort of annual maintenance on Sony camcorders. Do you get your camera serviced once a year? I know since it's all solid state, there's very little that could go wrong, but I want to decrease my future chances of the camera suffering a catastrophic failure in the field.

What's your advice?

ps. The reason I'm asking this, and why my question may be dumb, is that this is my first ever tapeless camera.

You don't say what the belly-up failure was, so it's hard to give advice as to whether preventative maintenance is worth while. I'd not bother myself - I'd invest all that money in a backup camera and take it with me.

The belly-up failure was the dreaded "C:32:60 error" which apparently can mean several things, but in my case it was that the focus servo died. It was impossible to focus the lens "manually" or through autofocus.

I don't know what a mythical annual maintenance would cost, but I was assuming it would be in the $100 range. I say "mythical" because I still haven't found anyone who offers this service or anyone who has it done. Even if the annual maintenance was $500, you could buy a lot of those for the $3500 to buy a backup camera, given that the camera probably only has a useful life of 5 to 10 years anyhow.

But for a camera that's almost all solid state (other than the focus servo are there any actual moving parts in this camera?) it seems there isn't much that can go wrong that "annual maintenance" could address.

I'm of the in the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" camp. I know I don't make any money saying this but that is the way I've always felt. The exception to this is if you are going on a very very important shoot or out of the country and just want it looked over and gone through to make sure that all systems are in top order.