A friend asked me a question, and I don’t knot the answer.
He asks whether two identical DV cameras can be linked (wirelessly) such that the image from one camera can be displayed on the other while both cameras are recording.
I’m not sure why he wants to know, but I imagine this: He’s shooting a scene, probably a live occurrence, with two cameras. He’s on one camera, and someone else is running the other one. As the director, he wants to know what is being shot on the other camera. (Maybe the other camera operator is inexperienced or something.) So he’d want to tape his angle, and then (I assume after locking down the camera) take a peek at what the other camera is getting and provide direction to the operator.
We’ve both been on multi-camera live shoots, and it was handled in the usual way: The cameras’ images went to a control booth where the director could choose which camera to take the action from. This was a long time ago, and our cameras did not record internally. (Also, the footage from each camera was not recorded, except on the one tape.) And we were in a studio. Nowadays a director could switch between cameras for the ‘live broadcast’ and still have the images from each camera for post-production.
I know my friend is not broadcasting live, so I don’t see the utility of what he’s asking. I know that he’s experienced with a camera, but that the people he’s likely to use to run a second camera probably aren’t. So I can see why he’d want to see what the other camera is doing. He tends to work on a zero-budget, so I can see why he wouldn’t want the expense (even if it’s just lunch) of another person to operate a camera while he runs a console – and he doesn’t have a console. So yeah, I get what he wants, even if I don’t get the utility.
So again: Can he ‘connect’ the cameras so that he can see what’s on either camera on his camera’s monitor? Or must he use a console?