Time to Dump the Tape!

I’ve had a rather unpleasant experience with my Canon HV20 camcorder while filming my last Dining Room Table Review.

Half of the recording wasn’t on the tape!

Half the tape contained the material I filmed for the review. The other half of the tape contained old material I recorded last year at the Net Neutrality rally in Ottawa. The camcorder had failed to record half of the content on the tape itself! And this wasn’t just half-and-half here. The tape contained a garbled mix of old and new material alike!

I threw the tape away as a precaution, and re-filmed the lost sequences on a different tape. However, the incident had got me thinking. More specifically, what would have happened if the incident had occurred during the Salon Son & Image?

It’s time to dump the magnetic media for something more reliable such as hard drive or flash based recording technology. But here’s the rub. I’ve yet to find a high definition digital camcorder with the same features and capabilities as the tape based Canon HV20, the most important ones being low light capabilities, and a shoe mount for my external microphone.

Does anyone out there have any suggestions? I’m afraid that if I keep using the HV20, I might soon encounter a situation from which I can’t possibly recover.

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