News Videographer: Shoot in HD where possible

A couple of months ago I wrote a piece about why it is important to shoot in high definition even if you plan to down convert to SD when you edit. Here was the original post.

My points mainly concerned the positive quality benefits of shooting in HD of HDV even when producing a standard definition project.

However, Angela Grant over at the excellent News Videographer blog - one of my favorites - has revealed that she too always shoots in HD using a Sony HVR-Z1U. She gives a couple of strong reasons for doing so. Among her points are:

"For me, I always wanted to shoot in HD because it gave me the choice of pulling framegrabs for publication in the newspaper. Also, it’s nice to have the choice to process your video as either HD or SD. Plus, this is the format of the future. Why buy outdated technology? You may as well join the bandwagon now, and not later."

Angela often does as I do and captures her HD footage in SD. But she suggests capturing in HD and converting during export if you have time.