Canon XL2 and Solid State recorders

[Unframed Obituary]

So I've got myself an XL2 and I love it. However to prolong it's life I want to record solid state style. I've heard of things like the Focus Firestore which takes the Firewire signal and records it to SD/HDD. I like this idea but most of them are really pricey and seem to be a bit overkill. Does anyone out there know of models (and somewhere to buy them) that are lower in price, possibly at the expense of features but not quality?

[cgbier]

Send the XL to Canon and let them replace the tape drive (400 bucks). That'll give you about 1,000 hours out of that cam. Cheaper than a solid state drive.

[Unframed Obituary]

Solid state recorders are around $500-$1000 here, more as a functional backup system. Getting to a Canon service centre is a pain and then some in Australia.

[cgbier]

Oh, Oz, sorry, completely overlooked that fact.

Some more tips: Don't use the original Canon mic. It is stereo and absolutely non-directional (and you can hear the lens servo), and that @#$& jack for the mic gets unreliable after a while, causing hisses or, in the worst case, audio drops.
Look if you can pick the original wide angle lens on ebay. A beautiful piece of glass (not cheap, though). Make sure that the electrical contacts in the lens mount are clean. They tend to become unreliable also.

Have fun playing with all the image settings - I've been using my XL1s for about seven years and still haven't finished to go through ALL the settings

[Unframed Obituary]

Yeah i'm looking into the Rode NTG-1 for audio. By the wide lens did you mean the 3x wide? It's pricey but it looks like it really widens the shot.

Part of the reason I got it was for all the image control.

[cgbier]

Yeah, the 3x - a wonderful lens. Pricey? Good W/A cost money. They are more difficult to engineer and produce than normal and tele.

[Unframed Obituary]

Fair point, they actually appear to be cheaper online than the 20x that comes stock. I'll be saving for one, that's for sure.

[cgbier]

We'll get rid of our XLs somewhen later this or next year. I don't know if they'll get scrapped or placed on bid. There are two W/A's. If you are interested, I'll send you a note.

[antman]

I have a firestore, and a citidisk. They both have pluses and minuses. For instance, the citidisk cfr, is great because it's tiny, and it not onloy has firewire but it also has usb, so if your pc laptop, which most dont these days have firewire, you can import your clips with usb. The firestore has more features that citidisc, but it'd big bulky, and their overpriced, though you can find them used on ebay for between 350-1,000 bucks. You may be better off future proofing and getting one that does hd as well. That way if you upgrade your cam to an xha1 you can use it on that as well.

[antman]

the ntg 1 is a great mic, but I think it runs off phantom power, huey can confirm this. The ntg 2, I have runs off battery or phntom, so it's a bit more versatile

[Unframed Obituary]

I have about 5 or so computers, notebooks and desktops, so ports aren't a problem. I may go HD for the future but I won't ever get an XHA1, it's too small for my liking.
Yeah the NTG is phantom but it's an XL2, so that's not really a problem. If I got an NTG-2 I'd never use batteries in it.