While I'm neither new to video , nor to this forum , I haven't been here in a while , and in particular this part of the forum doesn't seem to see much traffic these days - older format and I guess not so much to say about it .

Anyway , I picked up the Z7E for a bargain price , it came with the Sony 12x lens and a few accessories , but is missing the mic clip , front accessory shoe and rubber eyepiece - all of these things can be picked up on eBay , but some sellers have quite imaginative prices in their heads !

I got this as I've been asked to film a wedding in April for a friend ; I used to do a lot of weddings , but managed to get out of that ; these days mostly filming conferences , presentations , interviews etc .

While I have two PDW-F350 cameras , they are a bit big for taking to a wedding , and having not yet visited the venue I don't know what the lighting is going to be like , the bigger cameras aren't so wonderful in low light as they can get a bit noisy if you ramp the gain up , but they are great with good light .

I already have a little HVR-V1E , which I bought years ago for a mix of holidays and the odd paying job , but for a wedding I always like to have more than one camera , so a quick search turned this Z7 up ; I managed to haggle a bit off the asking price because of the missing parts , and already have plenty of batteries etc from my V1 .

The camera arrived a few days ago , basically working , but I quickly realised the headphone socket had worked loose , so downloaded the service manual and stripped the camera down ; it was just the locking ring which had come undone , allowing the socket to disappear in behind the panel - quite an easy fix and now all good . I have noted online that this is not an uncommon issue .

The only other issue is that the deck does not always load/eject tapes immediately - I will work on this , otherwise there are plenty of replacement mechanisms around , but I'm confident I will get it working - when the tape is loaded it records and plays back well . It seems to be an issue with the cassette cradle since bending it in various places seems to influence what happens ; I could otherwise buy the cheapest A1E I could find , since I think they use the same mech and steal the bits I need ( the cradle is easily removed as a sub assembly , and indeed there is a part no for it in the manual ) ; or there are people over in the states who supply either new or refurbed mechanisms for very reasonable prices , I'd just need to check shipping and import duties - but then I start getting into the realms of I could have just spent more for a better one ! The service manual covers the mech in some detail , so I will persevere with it .

Otherwise I still have my Focus Enhancement Firestore HD recorders with upgraded internal drives which I used previously with the V1 to record conferences , and can use one of these with the Z7 on a tripod and the V1 handheld for parts when I need to be more mobile . For the Firestores , I bought a 'Be-bop Box' which holds the Firestore under a camera ( or between camera and tripod head ) and put a PagLok plate onto the bottom so I can run the Firestore off an L95 or L96 battery , which lasts most of the day as the Firestore batteries are now shot .

Last thing , in common with my V1 which does not see a lot of use these days , is that the memory battery for date , time etc is discharged - I have the camera plugged into its mains adaptor and will leave it a while to see if it charges up ; not a major issue if it does not , but I know it is a soldered in cell rather than something like a CR2032 - pity .

The camera came with the Sony/Zeiss T* 12x zoom ; this actually seems quite a nice lens ; but given I also have a JVC GY-HD251 , with very few hours on it , and both the Fuji 16x lens and the Canon 14x lens ; I did mount the Fuji onto the Z7 ; of course it works fine and has more reach , just not quite as wide as the Sony lens ; the Canon goes equally wide as the Sony and is a 14x zoom , but in each case I'd only use on a tripod as they aren't balanced for handheld use with the Z7 , which is more of a handheld camcorder , different entirely with the JVC which was intended as a shoulder mount camera from the start . When I bought the JVC , as a body only , I initially used it with a Canon 2/3" lens and an adaptor , but quickly picked up the Fuji , which it worked very well with ; however the JVC shooting 'only' 720p saw it getting put to one side and seeing very little use .

Having only had the Z7 less than a week , it is too early to do any meaningful comparison of the lenses , other than the Sony lens suits the camera very well and the handling is just so nice with it , plus it comes with the excellent Sony lens hood ; it is certainly not noticeably better or worse than the other two . Of course if I needed the extra reach I could put on one of my other lenses ; even the Canon 2/3" lens which has a 2x multiplier , and for which I still have the 1/3" adaptor . It normally resides on one of my PDW-F350s with a Canon 2/3" to 1/2" adaptor ; and my other F350 has the 'proper' Canon HD 1/2" lens that partnered it from new . I also like to film motorsport , airshows and steam trains in my spare time with the big cameras , just as long as I don't have to carry them too far !

The other comment is that the Z7 really is a lot bigger than the V1 , and heavier , but still a compact camera compared to others I've had down the years . Besides the mic clip and other bits , I will need to get another ECM-MS2 mic for this camera ; I like to have a one point stereo mic on each camera as default as it is good to pick up ambience ; I do have a good selection of radio and other mics for specific purposes ; and on a job where sound is important the four channel audio on the big cameras comes into its own since I can still have the stereo mic for ambience and use radio mics or other types to close mic anyone who is speaking , and all can be mixed in post .

Derek, I don't know what you paid for the Z7, but I don't see the allure of trying to breath life into a 15 year old HD-only 1/3" camcorder that was never that good in the first place. Modern cameras can run circles around an old camera like this in every way that you want to compare them. And with a newer camera, you wouldn't need to spend so much time and energy jumping through hoops and coming up with fixes for stuff that wouldn't need to be "fixed" with modern cameras. And no matter what you do to the camera, it can never be brought up to modern specifications. I just don't get why you'd do this.

I hope you are able to meet the expectations of your friend for his/her wedding, because if it was my wedding, there's no way even Roger Deakins could ever possibly shoot something with a Z7 I'd find acceptable.

Just my 2 cents.

Hi Doug , I did not pay a lot for the Z7 , asking price was £345 and I submitted a cheeky offer of £200 , expecting him to haggle , but he accepted it . I know it had been relisted at least once .

Buying a newer/more expensive camera is of no interest to me ; the ones I have are perfectly adequate for my purposes , and given I am already 67 , and likely to retire in no more than another 3 years , it just wouldn't be worthwhile to me spending thousands on anything new .

TBH , HD 1920x1080 looks absolutely fine to me , and while one can sometimes see a difference with 4K on larger screens and under optimal conditions , most of the time HD is plenty good enough . I know plenty of others who share this view . At work we just spent £1/4 million updating one of our auditoria , replacing 15 year old projectors with three new modular LCD screens , the main one about 20 ft wide and the other two slightly smaller , none of them are 4K and everyone says they look absolutely brilliant , be they 'only' 1920x1080 . The other big change was integrating a Teams VC system into the setup , and changing all the old analogue Sennheiser Radio mics for new digital ones .

Anyway , re the camera , after a bit of pottering around yesterday , the deck seems to be loading and ejecting correctly again , and I will play with it further before deciding whether to use it with tape .

I still have three Focus Enhancements Firestore FS4 HD recorders , one of which I updated with a 120Gb drive and the other two with 80Gb drives , so I can run tapeless with it if the deck becomes an issue ; I've used these for years with my V1 , and before that ( the two that were not originally HD ) with my DSR500 . For the Firestores I bought a Bebob box which sits under the camera , and put a PagLok adaptor on ; so one L95 or 96 battery will run a Firestore all day ( the Firestore batteries are all shot , but I have about 25 L95 and 96 batteries to run my XDCAMs and my Paglights , plus a few other items which require a nominal 12V supply .

So regardless of the tape mech , I can still use the camera .

While I was still using it regularly , I had a new mech put in the V1 ( there was a guy down in England selling them for a very reasonable price and offering free installation , so I just sent him the camera and got it back a couple of weeks later , working perfectly ) , still use it fairly regularly and it is 100% reliable , but I don't like to go to things like weddings with just one camera . I bought that camera because it was small and handy enough to use for holidays and home stuff , but still good enough to use for work . It wasn't new either - I rarely buy new stuff . Even my XDCAM stuff was either used , or ex work stuff which I had used from new and passed on to me after it was superseded . I'm reasonably handy as my degree was in electrical and electronic engineering , and I have worked on both servicing and installation sides of high end audio , AV and broadcast kit , so fixing things does not worry me .

My DSLRs do shoot video , but the audio side is rudimentary , and they aren't suited for anything more than short clips , besides they don't capture motion too well , so other than a fairly static shot like the vows or exchanging of rings , they aren't so great .

I also have the HVR M15 deck to ingest from , so my cameras are only used to record and the mechs don't get worn out shuttling tapes back and forward . Similarly with my JVC GY-HD251 , I have the BR-HD50 deck to capture from , and for XDXCAM I have my PDW-F70 deck to ingest files in FAM mode , then Edit Ready converts the MXF files for editing in FCP . Of course with the Firestores , I record in .mov format then drag and drop . Also have a Matrox MXO2 for capturing from analogue sources . It all works very smoothly .

As for the wedding , I'm just doing it as a favour for a friend , he stated up front he isn't looking for anything fancy , and I'm sure he will be happy with what he gets .

While I don't see myself updating any of my cameras ; I will be looking at a new computer sometime ; I still run a 2008 8-core Mac Pro , which still handles video and photography just fine , but it is getting left behind as far as any online activities go - lots of websites no longer support the older version of Safari it runs , Adobe no longer updates etc ; so I probably will look next year at one of the 2019 onwards Mac Pro towers , which are becoming quite affordable now .

I still also do photography and audio - both live sound and recording , but I plan to retire no later than my 70th , after which I will just be a hobbyist , maybe doing just the occasional job for friends . At that point I can probably have a huge clear out of stuff I will no longer need .

A few days further on , I have inserted and ejected cassettes numerous times , no failures so far .

I have ordered the mic clip and expect it before long . Also spoke with a friend who has several HVR-A1E cameras and have arranged with him to swap my spare PDW-F70 XDCAM-HD deck for one and a few other items .

I’m thinking the HVR-A1E , being a small camera , could be positioned for shots not obtainable otherwise . Also , I have three Focus Enhancements Firestore FS-4HD drives , which can be used with my three HDV cameras . I’ve been using the drives with my HVR-V1E with good results , so no reason they shouldn’t work with the Z7 and the A1 as well as the V1 . I will still shoot on tape as well .

I already know both the V1 and the Z7 are good in low light , remains to be seen if the A1 is also .

I’ve had the Z7 powered on from the AC adaptor for a couple of days , will leave it until Friday to see if the memory battery holds a charge . I can replace it if needed , but it isn’t a major issue