A70 Movie problem

[Indigo]

I have an A70 and have tried to take long movie clips on a 256mB CF. The A70 seems to stop recording the movie a long time before the card is full (after a few minutes).

Is this a problem or a setting I can change?

I'm up to an airshow this weekend and wanted to take movies of the air displays.

Ta

Indigo

[khs8]

There are three resolutions for movie clip. The high one can take movie for 30 seconds only. The other two lower resolution can take movies for 3 minutes. You can take successive 30 seconds movies or 3 minutes movies, and then stitch them together to make a long movie. Virtualdub is a good tool for doing it (search the web for free dl).

[stopbath]

The A70 is not a movie camera. What it does is takes moving snap shots. Your movie clips can not exceed the 3 minutes on the lower resolutions, or 30 seconds on the higher resolutions. You can fill the card with as many clips as you wish (limit being size of memory on the card) The limit is there as the movie clips are stored in a memory buffer before dumped to the card.

Note that exposure and focus are locked at the start of the clip.

If you want top notch movies of airplanes, your best bet is a quality movie camera (that gets better sound, and adjusts focus, light balance and exposure throughout the shooting process.)

Have fun at the show.

[stduc]

Fraid the A70 is not a movie camera. In 640*480 mode you are limited to 30 seconds & on the two smaller modes you are limited to 3 minutes. If you have a fast card then the camera will not take very long to save each movie, so you will only have short breaks. I have to say though that the A70 compares very badly at air shows to a VCR with a 20* zoom and also to an SLR with a decent - i.e. better than 3* zoom - but then neither of these fit in your pocket!

BTW - it says all this in the manual!!!!!

[Indigo]

Thanks for your help guys, I'm all packed and ready to go but I don't have my manual with me.

Duxford here I come :o)

[stopbath]

stduc wrote:
.....

BTW - it says all this in the manual!!!!!

I found the manual a very good read. The cross references, notes, and information was generally well done. The technical writers did a fairly good job.

They could have gone into more detail in a few spots, but generally it's good.

[khs8]

I have taken very good movie clips at the high res mode in my last trip to Rio. I find the quality excellent. After I stitched them all together, it gave me a pretty good movie for my trip. I took over 100 still pictures as well. Of course it cannot be compared to a video cam, but then this thing can go into my pocket.