Any EX1 regrets?

Now that's an interesting thought... Beat Takeshi with an EX1 and a Red. :)
The portability of the EX1 makes it quite versatile. Nice to see the Japanese filmmakers using it too.
 
Workflow with FCP and After Effects??

Workflow with FCP and After Effects??

Great thread! I'm in a very similar position...buy an EX1 or 170/200A? I have another huge consideration that hasn't been addressed yet. Which camera/recording format/highest quality codec has the better overall workflow in a FCP/After Effects environment?

I do a lot of After Effects work and therefore a smooth workflow is a deal-breaker or deal-maker. Does anyone have experience working with 1080p XDCAM EX and/or DVCPRO HD in AE? I'm curious how the interframe vs. intraframe recording compares. How the long-GOP MPEG-2 holds up when compositing, etc. I recently read a lengthy thread on another forum that described horrible color and gamma problems with DVCPRO HD when used with FCP and AE. Any insight is greatly appreciated, thanks!
 
adamr316 said:
I'm surprised you'd choose the 170 over the EX1 for wedding work. In Event DV magazine the reviewer of the EX1 answered this very question as to why he didn't mention the rolling shutter issues of the EX1. His answer was that he has shot close to a hundred weddings with a CMOS camera (I think the V1U) and hasn't received one complaint about the camera flashes in his footage.

So if that says anything we may notice things more than clients because it's our jobs. But they're not bothered by it. I can tell you that people are a lot more bothered by dark footage (and they'll assume you didn't know how to expose your camera properly) or noisey footage. Dark and noisey lasts 30 (or 24) frames per second. A partial-frame camera flash is over in one.
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So I wonder why you skipped quoting the part of my post that referred to the DRS on the 170?

Im not for either, simply offered OP my thoughts. And speaking of exposure, 170 has built in waveform, you cant get more accurate than that. I stand by my post - if I were a wedding shooter, and needed a new camera today, Id buy the 170. But we are JUST talking weddings here.

Its OK to quote someone, but keep it in context.
 
Noel Evans said:
So I wonder why you skipped quoting the part of my post that referred to the DRS on the 170?

Im not for either, simply offered OP my thoughts. And speaking of exposure, 170 has built in waveform, you cant get more accurate than that. I stand by my post - if I were a wedding shooter, and needed a new camera today, Id buy the 170. But we are JUST talking weddings here.

Its OK to quote someone, but keep it in context.
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I agree. If you are looking for a camera to shoot weddings the EX-1 will give too many headaches.
The 170 will be very practical and at 720 pn you'll have enough time on the 16gig cards, even better with the 32 of course.
btw, 720 for big LCD or Plamas is more than enough, since these are probably the larger your image is ever going to be viewed.

I would also recommend the 170 if most of your work is handheld.
 
Aujom said:
I do a lot of After Effects work and therefore a smooth workflow is a deal-breaker or deal-maker. Does anyone have experience working with 1080p XDCAM EX and/or DVCPRO HD in AE? I'm curious how the interframe vs. intraframe recording compares. How the long-GOP MPEG-2 holds up when compositing, etc. I recently read a lengthy thread on another forum that described horrible color and gamma problems with DVCPRO HD when used with FCP and AE. Any insight is greatly appreciated, thanks!
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AE does NOT support XDCam format. Period. Big complaint I have with Adobe!

That said, I have saved XDCam footage out of Premiere as h.264 and edited that in AE successfully and the quality of the result is excellent.
 
Noel Evans said:
So I wonder why you skipped quoting the part of my post that referred to the DRS on the 170?

Im not for either, simply offered OP my thoughts. And speaking of exposure, 170 has built in waveform, you cant get more accurate than that. I stand by my post - if I were a wedding shooter, and needed a new camera today, Id buy the 170. But we are JUST talking weddings here.

Its OK to quote someone, but keep it in context.
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I skipped it because your post was long and I had to snip it somewhere to direct attention to what I was replying to (CMOS partial flash frame issues). Just like you snipped the strobe testing link, et al. out of mine...it was done to save readers from reading too much info. I didn't intentionally take out that part to misquote you, sorry about that if it appeared that way.

I just wanted to add to your previous post that SxS vs. P2 is more than just about disk space and ingest...it's about recording time. This matters the most in the field...aka the jungle that is weddings, LOL. Or any events for that matter.

Last week when I was shooting tons of footage for a conference every seminar easily went over an hour in length. One went 90 minutes and I didn't have to switch out cards and the EX1 didn't skip a frame of video...which is impressive to clients. I cannot imagine the hassle of having to swap out/offload cards every 16 minutes. Not to mention potentially distracting the presenters as you are swapping out cards and feeding them to your laptop/p2 drive.

Sure, I can buy two 32GB cards, but at that point I may as well buy a Canon A1 at that point. On MiniDV we were shooting 60 minutes per tape. When P2 came out that went down to 4 minutes (there were even 2 minute, 2GB models in the very beginning!). Still now the relatively affordable $850 16GB cards will only give you 16 minutes of footage in 1080/60i or 1080/24p modes. As opposed to 50ish minutes with 16GB SxS or 70 minutes in SP mode. With two 32 GB SxS cards I could shoot a whole wedding without swapping, what with their 200 minutes of combined recording time (or 280 minutes in SP mode!)

DVCPro HD is fine for shooting movies and I prefer the look of the HVX200 or HPX170. But in my line of work/area event/corporate gigs pay the bills and long running times are essential. Indy filmmaking is for fun and 95% of the time unpaid. So while the EX1 may not be the indy film king it can still do an awesome job.

As far as exposure...zebra stripes and the histogram are good enough for me. I will concede on the rendering times though, DVCPro HD is much better in this aspect when editing natively. I haven't used FCP with the EX1 yet but perhaps rendering out to ProRes will make work in Color easier/better?

Alexdias, what EX1 wedding headaches are you talking about? Wristaches, yes...hehe. I don't record events at 24p so 720pn is a moot point for me and is still a short amount of time in relation to a 16GB SxS card at it's highest quality settings.

Hotmagma, and that upressed SD looks like garbage compared to true HD. Don't get me started on some of those cable networks stretching 4:3 originated footage to 16:9...lol! I can't believe TV stations/engineers are still doing that at this point. Indeed 720 is good enough for most but just knowing that I can shoot at a higher quality makes me do it...so I will always be a fan/user of 1080 HD modes except when slow motion is required. At least until 1080/60p and 1080 slo-mo modes are in our cameras.
 
Possible headaches on weeding situations will mostly be the high possibilities of flash photography, in some cases from various sources and some handheld work.
Also, I don't see much improvement using a larger heavier camera in such situations.
Easier and more established post prod workflow with DVCPRO HD.

All these things are manageable, but you should consider the benefits in both cases.

In a separate note, as I progress on my experiences with the EX-3, both shooting and evaluating, I have to say that I'm not that impressed by the footage when handheld.
If the camera is stable (tripod or else) it shines, but when moving is not that much better than even some of the HVX footage I have form older projects.
I can't point for sure to a particular source at this time but I guess is related to codec.
Again, just my 2 cents...
 
I doubt it's the codec unless you are rapid panning high detail.. At that point, rolling shutter artifacts would be more of a problem. But I'd never keep this shot with any camera.

Please post example comparisons.
 
adamr316 said:
I skipped it because your post was long and I had to snip it somewhere to direct attention to what I was replying to (CMOS partial flash frame issues). Just like you snipped the strobe testing link, et al. out of mine...it was done to save readers from reading too much info. I didn't intentionally take out that part to misquote you, sorry about that if it appeared that way.
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Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.

I will reiterate. I havent used the 170 so what I am discussing assumes the camera lives up to the spec sheet, and am not pro 170 in anyway. All i did was look through the functions list, what OP might be shooting and compared that to EX1.
 
All right everybody, thanks to Fohdeesha, I got the opportunity to to check out the EX1 and all I can say is that it delivers. The ergonomics are not fantastic, but I also didn't think they were horrible. One-handed handheld shooting might become tiresome, but two-handed is doable. The image is stunning, there are no other words. The resolution holds up to its reputation, and the low light performance does as well. I liked the cadence of the 24p, the smoothness of the 30p and 60p. I brought home some footage from the meeting and it color corrected very easily, and the image is very maleable on the camera itself.

The one and only thing that you really have to know is if rolling shutter will be a problem for you, other than that there is no problems with the image or look that you can obtain with the camera. So if you are shooting catwalks and paparazzi stuff, the EX1 is not for you. If you are shooting handheld while on a skateboard, the EX1 is not for you. But for everything else, I don't think there is a better camera for straight image quality in this price-range than the EX1. Yes, I do like the out-of-box look of the panasonics color and gamma better, but from what I have seen, there is no indication that you cannot dial in that look on the EX1 or at the very least in post.

Alas, I still haven't made up my mind. Shooting footage is not my main source of bread and butter right now, so I am still considering a "get by" camera until Scarlet is released. Depending on the reports and footage that is released this week, I am considering the HMC150. Until the day that shooting is how I feed myself, I imagine that I will shoot a lot of weddings and small events and I can do that with the less expensive option now, especially because those gigs usually deliver in SD. I'll let everyone know my final decision within the week, but for my part, I believe that the EX1 is a slammin camera. Thanks for all of the invaluable insight into the cameras and from your shooting knowledge. DVXuser is my all-time favorite forum because of all who have similar interests and goals.
 
TheMusician said:
but for my part, I believe that the EX1 is a slammin camera.
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Absolutely. And considering the price range and your current circumstance, I agree, I think you will find the HMC150 a good fit, especially with the abundance of good quality cheap SD cards around. Good luck with it all.
 
I love my ex1, delivers great images if you know how to tweak them.

But there's a few downsides, because of the way the camera's built you need an IR filter to avoid blacks turning olive/brown colored with warm lights. The paint will wear off like a cheap plastic toy, and just last weekend my microphone holder broke off. I don't mind the flashes, I think I've even seen this effect happen in movies from the 70's (probably due to other reasons). It should also be possible for users to do their firmware updates instead of having to bring in their cam.
 
TheMusician said:
there is no indication that you cannot dial in that look on the EX1 or at the very least in post.
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Thanks for the post Musician.

A lot of "the look" come from post regardless. With RED you can work with RAW footage and you rely strictly on post.

Also, the EX1 has a slick profile interface, so there's no reason you can not create your out of the box look if you choose.
 
It's taking me some time to get used to it, but the settings on the EXs are quite deep and excellent. You can get pretty much whatever you want on camera and make it look nice right there.
I'll add the settings as a PRO factor in this camera.
 
rrrobb said:
I love my ex1, delivers great images if you know how to tweak them.

But there's a few downsides, because of the way the camera's built you need an IR filter to avoid blacks turning olive/brown colored with warm lights. The paint will wear off like a cheap plastic toy, and just last weekend my microphone holder broke off. I don't mind the flashes, I think I've even seen this effect happen in movies from the 70's (probably due to other reasons). It should also be possible for users to do their firmware updates instead of having to bring in their cam.
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Do you know of a working IR filter that corrects for this problem completly? I have heard of a few but most with drawbacks, I'm trying to find one that just fixes the problem without creating another problem in it's place
 
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