What brand or kind of digital camera?

Do I need to videotape a wedding with the same brand/kind of camera and tapes?

• I will be shooting a wedding with the HVR V1U. The tapes will be HDV Sony. It happens that I will need two more cameras for the ceremony. Do I need the other two cameras with the same brand? And the tapes too?

• Answer:

  Not necessarily, especially if you're going to do your editing on a computer. I shot a wedding in May using two camcorders, one Digital8 and one DV. Once it's all copied to your hard drive, it doesn't matter what the original source was as long as you can keep the extra camcorders on hand long enough to copy the video to your PC. In my case, the DV camcorder was borrowed, so I captured the contents of the tapes at full resolution so I could return it to the owner as soon as possible. Normally I capture at preview resolution for editing, but to do that you have to have the original tapes and camcorder on hand when you're ready to render.