my canon zr40 is saying "heads dirty - use cleaning cassette"

so, wanting to do some editing with my brand new 160 gb lacie hd, off i went on my bike to get a cleaning tape. brooks, wallgreens, and radio shack did not have cleaning tapes for dv! best buy is MILES away!

i found a tiny little audio/video place and they told me "Don't use cleaning tapes! We don't sell them. They're bad for the camera, get it cleaned professionally and get an alignment and stuff"

What do you folks think? Is it bad for it? Should I pay to get it cleaned?

"...where wings take dream..."
- G. W. Bush

That's BS, get a cleaning tape, but use it only sparingly. If you're shooting with a zr cam it's probably not cost effective to get it serviced.

--
Clyde
www.partypooperfilms.com

yeah, buy a cleaning tape and only use it when you have problems--it's not that bad for the tape head, especially if it's already dirty. It would cost you half the price of the camera to get it properly serviced.

It's weird that you can't find one at the drug store.

Yeah, no need to get Rolls Royce insurance for your Honda.

Nota "Poor analogist" Mono

okydoky, thanks all. sort of what i thought/wanted to hear i think the camera place just wanted my buisness, when she found out it was a canon (they don't service them) she did start saying" i mean, if you REALLY want, you can go get a cleanign tape and try it, but we don't recommend it"

well, im off to best buy now!

"...where wings take dream..."
- G. W. Bush

I just had a lot of dropouts on my last film, and I find that mixing tapes really causes this problem. Don't know why, but avoid mixing sony or panasonic or fuji minidv together. A tape can also turn dirty when you use a foreign tape in your tape deck or another camera. Oddly enough, sometimes I would wait a few hours, and the tape heads would start being able to record again. Use it sparingly, trust me. 10 seconds only.

wow, that is weird. i did mix tapes right before it happened. i'd been using jvc, then i switched to something else (don't have any with me at the moment, forget which) and two tapes later. boom.

thanks for the advice - thats really interesting!

i found something extemly unsetteling about the way the salesman at bestbuy laughed when i said, "so, do these work very well?". it was more of a cackle really.

"...where wings take dream..."
- G. W. Bush