I recently purchased a 13.3-inch aluminum unibody MacBook for college. I love making films, in fact that is my current career choice, but my camera only connects by FireWire. As you know, the aluminum MacBook does not have a FireWire port. I like the camera I have, so I don’t want to buy a new one. Do you know of any converter from FireWire to USB that is decently affordable?
There isn’t one. If you look around online, you’ll find some charlatans trying to sell you a “FireWire to USB” cable, but it’s really a double cable, with both FireWire and USB connectors on either end. But you can’t connect the FireWire part to your camera and the USB part to your MacBook and expect it to work. FireWire and USB are totally different specs and they just can’t talk to each other, ever.
So, unfortunately, we don’t have a magic bullet for you. You will need either a new MacBook with a FireWire port or a new camera that uses USB. The newest 13-inch MacBook Pros do have one FireWire 800 port, so you could plug your FireWire camera into one of those (FireWire 800 to 400 converters and cables are available). Sounds like you’ll be selling either the computer or the camera.
