I am trying to decide on which two cameras to buy. I like the idea of having HD (Sony FX1), but want the look of 24p. I presume there are plug-ins to replicate this look within editing packages?

The other thing that is stopping me from making a decision is the 2nd camera choice. If I buy an XL2 (as 1st camera) for the 24p then it's easy, I buy the XL1 as a 2nd camera.

But if I buy the FX1 as 1st camera what do I buy as the 2nd? Would an FX1 and XL1 footage not look completely different in the edit suite when mixed together?

Any help appreciated...

I highly recommend the Canon HV20 as a B roll camera.

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Hi Chuck, thanks for your reply.

What do you think of using two different brands of camera? I have been advised to stay clear of this and opt for two cameras of the same brand?

Setting the proper White Balance and using manual controls, rather than auto, will help in making the video a better match. You mentioned the XL2 which is Canon so I suggest the HV20 as a B roll cam. I don't think you will have a problem with the video matching on most 3CCD cameras of that quality anyway. We do a 6 camera shoot 3 times a week, we use 2 Panasonic HPX500, 2 Canon XL-A1, and 2 Sony HDW-750, no problems if they are all set up right. For weddings we use the XL-A1 and the HV20 but we have used the HPX500 and the HV20 and the video matched just fine. This is all 3CCD equipment and all HDV also but we used similar cameras when we where shooting SD a year ago. We also have some very nice lenses on these cameras as well.

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Dell Precision 490; 2 x Xeon 3.0 Dual Core Processors, 4gb RAM, ATI Stealth 512mb Video, X-Fi ExtremeMusic Sound Card, 2 x 250gb SATA II , 1 x 750gb SATA II; Premiere Elements 1-4, Premiere Pro CS3, After Effects 7-CS3, Soundbooth, Photoshop http://muvipix.com

I've had a very similar set up to that previously fuz, and what chuck says is perfectly correct, always set the white balance.

The one thing I noticed was that the canons reacted more to red light than the sonys, this was only really a pain in artificial light. I set up a colour correction filter to adjust for this, I saved the settings of the filter, and ever since then if I've needed to work in post with footage from the same cameras, all I need to do is apply those filter settings to the clips from the canon, which takes a whole 10 seconds.