Im about 90% sure I want the Cannon XA10 and should have it by spring! However I like to weigh my options before taking the plunge. The Cannon XA10 has internal memory and also utilizes 2 SD cards. Whats the advantage of SD card cams over mini Dv's ? Fill my head with your knoledge,,,lots of it I hope, the more the better. ramble on please!
My MiniDV requires a firewire to pull the footage off of the tape. Some desktops and most laptops don't have the port for that wire. You can add the part to your computer but it's another thing you have to do. I had my miniDV (canon HV20) freeze up (literally) during a really cold hunting trip. Only did it once.. and I'm not sure it something the card ones can avoid but the card cameras don't have the same moving parts so... maybe they're more cold friendly. If I could, I'd have a card camera rather than the tape version.
I just got an AX10 to replace my Sony FX1000 miniDV camera. I never had any issues with miniDV cameras freezing up in cold temps...you are actually more likely to get glitches in the video on an SD style camera than with a miniDV...the technology is really good, but not quite refined yet. MiniDV is still, IMO, the more reliable of the two. However, with the two card plus hard drive set up on the AX10, you having the option to back up the footage in two other drives in the event an SD card fizzles out on you. So the design of the AX10 pretty much solves that problem. The biggest benefits you are going to get come with the smaller size of the camera and the media. The past two seasons we have been carrying a big, heavy camera and camera arm in and out of the woods, and up and down trees. To be honest...it's getting old. We have been able to reduce the weight of our filming set up by almost 70% by designing a suspension style camera arm and using the AX10 and without giving up much in the ability to generate quality video. Of course we haven't used the new system much yet, but it appears the trade offs will be worth it. Downloading footage to a computer is much easier and much faster with the SD card cameras. Also, the ability to go through footage and erase unwanted footage with a touch of a button is a huge time saver when it comes to reviewing and editing footage, not to mention download time. With miniDV tapes you also have to baby-sitt the download process as any blue screen fragments will cause the download to stop and need to be restarted. Having your footage in digital files is also very nice, especially for organizing the footage. You just need to be sure you have at least a quad core processor or better computer with ample storage, as the AVCHD 1920X1080 resolution will drastically bog down most computers with lesser capabilities. So you'll need a pretty decent computer...I use a gaming computer with a terabyte of storage and a portable hard drive with another two terabytes. Using Pinnacle Studio 12, I can fly through editing even with the AVCHD high res footage. We also send footage from location to location for editing, and using SD cards is obviously very beneficial for that. If I was buying something new, which I did, I would also get an AX10...for hunting purposes and what you get for the money they are hard to beat. You will also need to buy a decent shotgun mic for the AX10, so keep that in mind. Hope that helps somewhat. B&H.com - $1849 TYD
Thanks you two for the input, its appreciated! I have made my mind up, im going with the Cannon XA10.
Use another Sd Card inside the camear can expand your storage and much easy for your put the informations into PC in any time. And nowdays most of the Sd card has supported power--failure protection, is the camera suddely in power-off in usage, the pictures or videos could be storaged in due time without fault. Regarding for the SD Card, recently I have noticed a action in web to win some SD Card or CF Card, just have a tried, maybe you would be interested, easy to paritipate, just follow and re-twit them on goo.gl/o9we1A, cross my fingers now.
