Camera question: Canon Optura 50

Welcome to the forum.

You don't say what program you'll be using nor what computer you have nor your mode of shooting nor your artistic goals - but here's some generic advice.

1. Canon cameras are notorious for their weak implementation of firewire and timecode - two significant issues when working with Final Cut.

2. Their implementation of the firewire protocol is non-standard. Be sure to use FIREWIRE BASIC (a reduced instruction set) as the device control protocol when working with them.

3. Canons don't play well with other devices on the same bus. Since all firewire ports on a Mac connect to the same bus, if you are using an external hard drive, you may need to install a firewire card (PCI, PCMCIA or Expresscard34 depending on your machine) to create a second bus for the camera. This isolates the camera from the hard drives. Once this happens, they may work flawlessly. If you have a computer model that lacks the capability of adding a second firewire bus, you could be SOL

4. Some Canon cameras have never had an issue connecting and capturing. Some have major issues. In fairness to the brand, other cameras have connection issues as well but not to the same extent (as it would seem from the posts on these boards).

5. Inexpensive cameras have inexpensive tape drive systems that will cost nearly as much as the camera to fix if they blow up. These cameras do not like the hammering of jog and shuttling when used as capture device.

Good luck,
x

I've been using Canon cameras in the past years and I'm lucky to be in the category of Studio x point 4: never had any problems with firewire (I do NOT use Firewire basic, but the full DV-PAL Easy Setup) nor with LaCie drives.

To be more precise I had a MV4i (PAL Elura 2) and now I have MVX4i (PAL Optura 600), and I only use external firewire LaCie Drives: 2 x 250 GB Porsche model that are daisy chained with a 3rd older 60 GB LaCie drive.

I'm mainly using the Intel iMac providing 2 firewire ports (that are based on the same FW bus): I can connect my camera daisy chained to the LaCie disks or to the second port and everything works flawlessly with the full DV-PAL Easy Setup.

To be fair I must say that the tape drive of the older camera broke after 2.5 years; I had it fixed and broke again after 2 more years, then I switched to my current camera (the older electronics still works and I may use it as an A/D converter...). I hope my current 6 month old camera will last longer.

Piero

I am a longtime user of Canon Opturas and they have always been reliable. I have put them through years of countless hours of taping & playback including capturing on multiple Macs with both Final Cut Express and iMovie. Never had a problem, and I even have Lacie external Firewire drives.

I don't jog/shuttle the camera to get individual clips when I'm capturing video, however, and I believe that's one of the reasons the transports have never failed me. I use Capture Now and capture the entire recording in one sitting, and I use a separate rewinder to rewind my tapes.

I suggest that you get a UV or Skylight filter for the lens, a larger capacity battery and an extended warranty.
And - select a single tape brand and use it exclusively; don't go cheap and don't switch tape brands on your camera.
For what it's worth, I use Maxell DVM63Pro and DVM63Master tapes only; have never had a problem with them.

The Optura 50 is a very nice unit and if you can get it at an attractive price, I'd say go for it.
It's an older model but I'd take it over any of the current DC or ZR series Canon cams.

The Optura 20 and Optura xi also meet your requirements.