Y’know, I’m getting very quickly sold on using flash memory for a recording medium.  My experiences testing the Sony EX-1 and EX-3 cameras have really made me a believer.  Problem is, I already have a raft of cameras (Canon XL-series, mostly) that I still love and still make great pictures.  And in the current economy, pouring over $12K into an EX3 and wide angle lens just isn’t going to happen too soon.  What to do?

Focus Enhancements has been hitting the ball out of the park with hard drive recorders for several years now, and the big brains there have just made another leap.  Enter the FS-H200, which at first glance looks like an FS-5 hard disc recorder.  However, when you turn it on it’s side, you will find a Compact Flash slot instead of an internal hard drive.  Using HV and HDV’s 13-gigs-per-hour data rate, it’s an easy calculation that a 16Gb compact flash card will record over an hour of footage, and a 32Gb over 2 hours.  (Of course, CF cards are still much more expensive than an equivalent DV/HDV tape, but if you have ever had a tape dropout spoil your edit, you can easily see that double-recording with CF and tape is a very inexpensive insurance policy, and one that can drastically speed up your workflow to boot.)  read more...