Originally Posted by Jim_Gunn

I am also a fan of mini-Dv or DVCam tape. They makes the best permanent backups. Any footage stored only on hard drive storage takes up way, way too much space for long term archival storage. What are you going to do if you film dozens or hundreds of shoots a year- have a closet or a storage unit stacked floor to ceiling with 1 Tb hard drives to keep all that precious, irreplaceable raw footage? Here is a good example of tape saving the day- I recently re-captured and re-edited some footage I had filmed on mini-DV tapes as far back as the late 1990s and I was able to re-purpose all that footage in pristine format (such as it was) and it it still making me money today.

For these reasons I am leery of electronic storage cameras. HDV still works great for my workflow and if it is well lit, it looks phenomenal. I'm in no rush to upgrade my camera right now. Instead of obsessing on the actual camera itself, I'd rather get the lighting perfect and the best models in the scene with good action all around. :-)