On Sight plans to offer Panasonic P2 memory cards for hire as part of a concerted effort by the two companies to make IT-based tapeless working more affordable.

The broadcast services provider has bought 50 which it will rent out for around£30 per day alongside new P2 Varicam camcorders.

A single 32-gigabyte P2 card costs around£800 to buy and records between 35 and 165 minutes of footage depending on the quality. A day's shoot could potentially use up to 15 cards unless footage is frequently downloaded to an external device.

“We've talked to programme-makers who said often it simply isn't realistic to just take two or three cards on location and spend time dumping footage to a laptop or storage device,” explained On Sight client services manager Andy Shelley.

“Hiring rather than buying will allow camera operators to take a number of cards on a shoot until they are happy with the tapeless workflow.”

On the Varicam 2700 a single 32GB P2 card records for 35 minutes in AVC-Intra 100 or DVCPRO HD, 44 minutes in AVC-Intra 100 in native 1080/24p, 70 - 165 minutes in AVC-Intra 50 and 35 - 85 minutes in DVCPRO.

On Sight also offers Sony SxS memory cards for hire.

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