Would you go with the Pan HPX170 or Sony HVRZ7U for weddings

[Rob Morse]

Philip, with the Z5 & Z7 the unit clips right to the back so there is no wire or battery attached. I was using a Focus Enhancements hard drive with my PD-170 for a while and never had a situation where the wire came out. It's a fairly secure connection. I suppose a piece of gaffers tape here and there would not hurt anything. The MRC-1 is a lot lighter as well. The beauty of the solid state is a 5 minute download vs real time from tape. Of course I still use the tape for archive.

[Robert Bec]

Ive been using the Z7 for over a year now luv it i record to card and tape at the same time brilliant archive the tape download the card to my raid unit .

Low light its fine i never go passed 6db cant see no grain

10 out of 10 for this camera highly recommend it

Rob

[Denny Lajeunesse]

Originally Posted by Philip Howells

I've resisted any move to CMOS or rolling shutters for our work, weddings. Until photographers stop using flash you'll have to explain away nasty onscreen effects of the rolling shutter. We use three z1s and wouldn't change for any other Sony product, in fact I'm thinking of adding a fourth.

As far as the cards are concerned, a Sony engineer pointed out to me the other day that CF cards lose all their content in the case of a power failure whilst they're powered up eg battery running out - Sony's S&S cards lose a couple of seconds. I'm not familiar with P2 cards but it's worth checking.

I drive my cameras like my cars - why change until there's an overwhelmingly better product or they're worn out.

P2 cards have built in redundancy. I believe the guts are basically 4 SD chips in a raid array.

I also haven't had any problems with the HMC150 and SD cards (so far). Reportedly there can be issues with the end of the clip that was recording when power is cut, but the panasonic clip restorer is supposed to be able to "end" the clip properly.