We use our trusted Canon XM to shoot documentaries about our community-art projects abroad (Ukraine, Vietnam, Tanzania...all over the world actually) but now for a second time, the display has given up on us. In search of a worthy replacement, we have played around with a Sony PD170 from a friend that he had up for sale, but we thought it was a bit on the heavy side and the image quality was not that much better. So then we thought the other way around an bought ourselves a High Definition Camcorder HDC-SD9, but after some thorough testing, we decided to return it because the knobs are really very tiny and the AVCHD-codec doesn't play nice with FCP on one of our machines, since it's a G5 and transcoding the material through 3rd party apps like Toast or Voltaic and to be able to use the surround sound capabilities seems cumbersome.
So what would be a nice (even second hand) semi-pro camera in the $1k range that is not too big and heavy, preferably works tapeless and plays nice with FCP in general? HD is not necessary, only if after 'downgrading' to a SD-DVD, the image-quality still is superior.
Any advise would be highly appreciated!
Arno Peeters
www.tapetv.nl
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