SDHC for SxS

Relating to cost per minute... If you're not shooting overcrank footage on the EX (or not doing more than 46fps), you can use SDHC cards on the EX1 and EX3. Both Hoodman and Sony make the adapter ($50 or $100 dollars respectively), and it's very reliable. You do have to use particular brands of SDHC cards that have tested well for this purpose, but the Transcend 16GB cards are about $50 apiece. 32GB Transcend cards are about $135 apiece. That's potentially cheaper than some CF cards (help me out here guys - I don't own a 5D yet, don't know which cards are preferred brandwise) for the same size. A 16gb card give you about 56minutes of XDCAM-EX recording in HQ mode. 32 is about 112 minutes. Granted, owning offical SxS cards is prudent if you need to shoot 60fps overcrank. Investing in one $500 or less card may cover this need. Also, a second Hoodman adapter may add flexibility for the second slot to your workflow in the field. So that's another $50. As for the XDCAM codec, I find it to be rock solid. I've never managed to break it. It has great lattitude, and doesn't fall apart with repetitive texture patterns (leaves, grass, waves). Also, the HD-SDI out means you can bypass the XDCAM-EX encoding, and record directly to a portable device or computer with the codec of your choice. On one set I recorded greenscreen footage directly to a computer using a Blackmagic HD extreme card and the ProRes422 HQ codec. This gave me more color information to work with for keying later. And the 5D *can't* give you that flexibility.