What’s the ideal amount of in-field recording time? While some might say you can never have too much, for workflow reasons smaller amounts of footage can be much more manageable. So how much capacity is enough?
30 minute tape loads have been the standard since the BetacamSP days. 11 minutes of per roll (wether 400′ of 16mm, or 1000′ of 35mm). has always been pretty standard in the film world. 60 minutes was the run time of MiniDV.
I don’t think anyone would argue that these runtimes are optimal, as changing reels, and tapes has always been a hassle, especially if you run out in the middle of the take. They are simply limited by the considerations of physical space. There’s only so much tape that can be packed into a cassette, there’s only so much film that can fit into a camera.