Former still photographer and live sound producer Chad Shaw founded Creative Mountain Images in 2001. It's an independent production company in Vail, CO, that produces a wide range of special event, training and corporate projects.
In January, after using DV camcorders for several years, Shaw bought two Sony XDCAM HD camcorders (the 350L and the 330L) and two Fujinon lenses (a 17×5.5 and a wide angle). He said he's already paid it off with the number of new projects he's able to handle.

Shaw mostly shoots in the 25 Mbps, DVCAM mode at 30p and in the HDV format at 24p. He just received a software update from Apple to capture footage at 35 Mbps (one from Sony is still pending), which will require some of his other gear to be upgraded (to Apple's new Intel Pentium-based CPU with serial ATA drives running Final Cut Pro HD editing software) to handle the faster bit rate. [At this point, FCP HD supports all HD frame rates except 30p fps. See Apple item above.]

For storage, he's got 10 LaCie 250 GB d2 FireWire800 drives (for 3 TB total), which he said is more than enough for the types of projects he edits.

Q: What prompted your move to a tapeless acquisition system?
A: We were overworking our DV equipment and needed to upgrade. When I looked around, I quickly saw that moving to the Sony XDCAM HD system was a better value, because I was getting so much more functionality and HD acquisition. I find the optical disc format to be easy to understand and it makes my production go that much faster. And the quality of the XDCAM's 25 Mbps images is better than other DV cameras.

I've dealt with digital audiotape for years and saw how tape stock can break down after a few years. The optical disc format is good for 30 years or more. I plan to transfer all of my audio and video clips on tape to XDCAM discs for archiving. The 23 GB discs are reusable, inexpensive and easy to handle and store.

Q: Why not move to a more affordable HDV camera, as opposed to the XDCAM HD camcorder?
A: It goes back to wanting to move away from videotape. There are so many things that can go wrong with tape-dropouts, failing tape heads and whatever. I could have gone with the Panasonic P2 solid-state camera, but I sometimes have to record an hour of continuous footage. That gets expensive with P2 cards. The XDCAM camcorder allows me to record 90 minutes in HDV mode.

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