Philip Hinkle
June 30th, 2007, 07:25 PM
I have a few Canon A1 camcorders and an HV20. In the past on my older camcorders I used the Maxell brand tapes so just stuck with them since I have a boatload of them already on hand. Maxell seems to be the "bottom of the barrel" quality wise according to most. In my old SD days I had very little problem with dropouts or clogs.
Now in HDV land I get a few dropouts in each project and it varies from cam to cam which one is dropping the most. For a typical wedding project we are talking between 5-10 dropouts total with about 8-10 tapes of footage shot during the day. Is this a normal ratio for dropouts? Should there be any at all. If this is normal I can live with it as we are always shooting with mulitple cams and have been able to cover the dropout easily enough.
I have contemplated switching to another brand and the Sony Premium seems to be the most popular version that is economically priced. My problem is I have lots of projects in the backlog so during the process of shooting new jobs on a new tape I will still have to upload a bunch of the older Maxell tapes. That means I will be switching brands frequently in my designated upload cam. This upload cam is also my third cam for a wedding shoot. I don't want to run a head cleaner each time I switch or I will wear out the heads in a heartbeat. Short of getting a 4th cam (for which I don't have the budget) what is the best method for me to use regarding switching tapes if I choose to do so.
My 2 Canon A1s should be ok since they are used only for shooting. I just don't want to switch, shoot a wedding and the whole thing be hosed from the tape switch. If I switch over it will be the last time I switch with these cams.
Thanks for any help!
Now in HDV land I get a few dropouts in each project and it varies from cam to cam which one is dropping the most. For a typical wedding project we are talking between 5-10 dropouts total with about 8-10 tapes of footage shot during the day. Is this a normal ratio for dropouts? Should there be any at all. If this is normal I can live with it as we are always shooting with mulitple cams and have been able to cover the dropout easily enough.
I have contemplated switching to another brand and the Sony Premium seems to be the most popular version that is economically priced. My problem is I have lots of projects in the backlog so during the process of shooting new jobs on a new tape I will still have to upload a bunch of the older Maxell tapes. That means I will be switching brands frequently in my designated upload cam. This upload cam is also my third cam for a wedding shoot. I don't want to run a head cleaner each time I switch or I will wear out the heads in a heartbeat. Short of getting a 4th cam (for which I don't have the budget) what is the best method for me to use regarding switching tapes if I choose to do so.
My 2 Canon A1s should be ok since they are used only for shooting. I just don't want to switch, shoot a wedding and the whole thing be hosed from the tape switch. If I switch over it will be the last time I switch with these cams.
Thanks for any help!