Durability does come in handy if the user was to say, use the SSD as a portable Storage solution. One SSD I have inspected had a connection beside the SATA connectors in which you could use the standard USB cable that many Portable HDD use. You wouldn’t have to be worried about such problems as dropping it as much but then comes the loss, speed. I believe the speed of the drive would suffer through the transfer rate of the USB 2.0. Perhaps however if the drives were to incorporate USB 3.0 in the future then that would definitely make a difference.

I think that in most cases these SSD drives are still not worth the cost for the results that they have shown but in the future they will be.

But today, most of the CMOS have lazy read-reset times, generating a reasonably amount of distortion.

And the film cameras already have some kind of “rolling shutter”. The rotative shutter exposes the frame progressively, like the rolling shutter of the CMOS. See this animation: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Moviecam_schematic_animation.gif.

For consumer camcorders, it makes perfect sense to use flash memory. Consumer camcorders are very compact, which means that even the smallest amount of noise from a hard drive or tape drive is picked up by the camera’s internal microphone. Not to mention ground loop issues, etc.. Flash based camcorders have no moving parts (except zoom/focus) which means no noise for the microphone to pick up.

The drives tested above came in around 60-65MB/sec sustained. SSD’s are now capable of almost THREE times that. And the price is quickly on it’s way to the area you specified. (Currently $300 for 128GB (MLC) OCZ w/ 140MB/s sustained read and 90MB/s sustained write. And it’s only going to get better..)

Like any other technology, upon first release it is going to be fairly expensive, but as it becomes more mainstream, the cost to manufacture decreases allowing for cheaper retail cost.

Also, … had they strapped a couple of magnetic drives to his hip it would have been a much different story. I believe given the choice between the ruggedness of an SSD (Very easy to make waterproof, too…) or the Capacity of a platter disk, Hurley would have chosen the SSD. The US Military has been using SSD’s for MANY YEARS (at costs in the $5-50k/each range, no less) … for a reason…

Also, because Hurley was known for using “average” equipment, you might be suprised… If digital had been available in his time, and it was considered as “average” as it is today, … maybe he’d have been using digital equipment.

The fact that old people refuse to go digital, using every excuse possible doesn’t make digital bad… (Example : Saying – “It just doesn’t look as good.” Which I tested a few years back by puting a digital print and a print from a 35mm in front of a career photographer (and a good friend that is in his 60’s) who still won’t buy digital, and he couldn’t tell me which of the two was from 35mm without looking at the back of the stock…..) These are the same people that think we should go back to 33 and 45 records… Really???? C’mon!!!!

I briefly mentioned to Juan, and will expand here, the need for one more entry – a new camera to replace the date HVR-A1 design. It is a small, under 2 lb camera great for POV, backup, and other applications where a small inconspicuous camera is needed. If Sony could re-engineer and update their classic DCR-TRV-900 DV camera design for the HD world, that would be perfect. If such a cmaera is built with an AVCHD (h.264 / mp4) recording format, hopefully it will be at an encoding rate of 35 mbps or higher.

Considering the EX1 and the Z7, these are excellent cameras technically. The challenge is ergononmics. I think they have gone over the line as far as being comfortably hand holdable for any length of time. It would not take much to make them shoulderable, and I am not talking about the Z270 or the EX3. All that would be needed would be a viewfinder hood/magnifier and forward handle extension.

We are looking to use these for video journalism

how good is the infra red?

thanks Ed