Got a chance to put EX1 up against HVX

OgdenStudios said:
The difference in the chips is what interests me. The Panasonic chips are standard definition where "smoke and mirrors" turn the image into HD. This is why it is better in low light but has a softer image.

I stumbled upon this article a few weeks ago. The reviewer is admittedly a Sony rep or somehow affiliated with them but issues about lens shades and this "chip stuff" is mentioned.

http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0711/camera-corner-the-sony-xd-cam-tapeless-camcorder.html
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"But don't worry if you happen to do a bit of corporate videography during the week or weddings at the weekend, as the PMW-EX1 also shoots in native 1080i interlace mode, should a client demand it."

Interesting, no mention of the risk of getting "partial exposure" from flashes and lights common to weddings. Maybe he doesn't know of the "partial exposure" problem from CMOS, but I doubt he doesn't know.

"I believe the SxS solid-state system is what the world has been waiting for, not just because it is Sony either. Some people accuse me of flying the Sony flag a bit too often, but I have good reason to. Sony just gets it right time and time again, not only with camcorders and high-end production gear, but with hi-fi, studio recording equipment, DVD players, etc. They have a reputation for quality, reliability and products that do the job year-in-year-out. If they did not, I would use someone else's gear; I really don't care whose name is on the side of the camcorder."

He's mentioned he's used a HVX200/P2 before, but I guess he thinks SxS is god's gift to the world. He did mention the lack of metadata/proxies before, but no mention of the 14 delay to switch over to playback mode. Interesting....


"Firstly, due to the cheap cost of SxS cards and the huge amount of footage that can be recorded to them thanks to Sony's superb Long GOP MPEG2 codec, there is no need to take additional storage devices on location when you are shooting – i.e., laptops, Firewire hard drives, P2 stores and other devices. With 50 minutes of full 1920x1080 HD HQ footage on a single 16GB card, most of us will only ever need two 16GB SxS cards for an entire day's shoot, especially considering the 'delete last clip' function. Anyone who needs more than this, simply take four 16GB cards with you, or two 32GB cards. This system is much easier."

Needs no explaining...


"If you own a Sony Z1, Panasonic HVX200, JVC ProHD series or even a Canon XL H1, you will be phoning around for the best Part-Ex deal you can get after you see the quality of the footage from Sony's new PMW-EX1 – wow!!

My rating of 4 out of 5 stars is based on the pre-production unit that had a few issues not worth mentioning here as they won't be in the final production unit. This rating could well change to 5 out of 5 once I get my hands on a final unit in October"

Also needs no explaining.

That writeup is from Aug 2007, btw
 
My question is: If one is thinking about the PMW-EX1, why not consider the HPX-500? For an extra couple grand you can get into a nice shoulder-mount camera.
 
Maybe this is off-topic, but: it seems that partial exposure problems should be relatively easy to fix in post; and I further imagine they should be fairly easy to automatically identify and fix in post. Has anyone had any good results with these? Anyone working on a plug-in to do it automatically?
 
OgdenStudios said:
My question is: If one is thinking about the PMW-EX1, why not consider the HPX-500? For an extra couple grand you can get into a nice shoulder-mount camera.
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Well not everyone wants or needs a shoulder cam. A good amount of people need a HVX/EX1 sized camera with those type of functions.
 
stephenmick said:
Looks like he's wearing an EX shirt. Not sure how much that says, but I've got better things to do than try to figure it out…

Like going out and actually shooting something. :D

--SM
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To be sure this makes him either a fanboi or cheap free shirt waring bastard but it doesn't in itself make him a Sony employee or plant.


As to his review... RE1000 pointed out some of the more glaring weaknesses.
 
OgdenStudios said:
My question is: If one is thinking about the PMW-EX1, why not consider the HPX-500? For an extra couple grand you can get into a nice shoulder-mount camera.
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Of course that is without a lens or battery system. And of course something more substantial then a Bogen 501 head.

The HPX is not a functioning camera for the $12k or so the body goes for.
 
Barry_Green said:
(PART II)

-- rolling shutter bullcrap.
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Barry, last month you mentioned you had a RED on order with the total cost hitting some high numbers, how would you compare the rolling shutter artifacts to the EX1?

Out of everything you wrote, the most valid I read is rolling shutter, and the image going a bit soft during movement.

I did some test tonight regarding the softness. You mentioned it did not seem most of this was probably not due to motion blur.
Did you try the same tests with 720 60P, or 1080i?, faster shutter speeds.

I did and it does get better (as it should) with the above mentioned. Also, I'm not sure if you can rely on the Sony's peaking response speed. This might add a tad of visual peaking delay. Having said that, it may be a bit softer than it should be under those conditions. I'll have to do some more experiments.

If it is, it makes me wonder if this is not directly correlated to the CMOS rolling shutter design, or as you metion the possibility of some sort of active NR that's always on. This may slow down the response time?
 
how would you compare the rolling shutter artifacts to the EX1?
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Haven't gotten my hands on a Red One yet so I can't compare the two. I'm still a tad torn on that -- I mean, even if the Red One has it and it's a problem, the backlog of rentals should probably mean that I could cover the cost of it in short order so... that could greatly lower the risk of buying, so -- do I care all that much? If I can pay it off in a couple of months' work, then it's free, right? But I'd like to get some answers on the severity (or lack thereof) of the rolling shutter artifacts on the Red. I'm looking to Jim Arthurs' report for that, he's supposed to test the Red One for rolling shutter and how it affects motion tracking and match moving very soon (this week or next, I believe).

I would love to test it before plunking down the money, believe me. I'm kind of hoping that the weight will lend some inertia to balance out the issue. But... if the rental income is there, I'd be a fool to pass on it if the customer doesn't care about the issue, right? Right? Still trying to be sure about this, as it's a decent chunk of change (around $50k).

Frankly, even if the rolling shutter response was identical between the two, as a practical matter it may still be less of a factor for the Red because I think the EX1 is far more likely to be put into scenarios where the rolling shutter would compromise the footage than the Red is. The Red's particularly unsuited to sports or news coverage or weddings, those are places where the EX1 is far more likely to be found, and those are places where flashes and running handheld footage and such are more likely to happen and therefore interact with the rolling shutter in undesirable ways. The Red seems like it's going to spend its life in tightly controlled studio circumstances and therefore even if it has the issue, it shouldn't come into the equation as much. But, also, the Red will likely be used for a *lot* of matchmoving and compositing tasks, and those are the kind of tasks that sent Russ Andersson into a rant about the HV20's rolling shutter so -- errr... you got me wavering again. Hmm. I'd really like to see what Jim comes up with!

Did you try the same tests with 720 60P, or 1080i?, faster shutter speeds.
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720p seems like simple pixel binning to me, probably binning on the vertical. Didn't seem to be too much compelling reason to use that format so I didn't spend a lot of time on it, I figure that most EX1 users are going to go for 1080 mode (especially since they take up the same amount of bandwidth) so I only briefly forayed into 720. I did play with faster shutter speeds, and at 1/2000th I got stable detail rendering, which would seem to mean that the detail loss is simple motion blur, but -- it just doesn't feel like it adds up to just motion blur. It seems like there's something else at work that I can't quite identify. I mean, other cameras don't lose as much detail at the same shutter speeds, so I still think it's due to some aggressive detail coring and noise reduction, and with the super-short shutter speeds it probably has enough interframe intelligence to know to not attempt blending frames on such disparate images, maybe? I dunno. Like I said, I guess it's possible that it's just motion blur but everyone who watched the waveform monitor was like "whoa, what's happening here?" I'm not escalating this to the point of "ooh, this is a problem, don't buy it", but I am saying that it's curious and it seemed a lot more pronounced on the EX1 than on any other camera I've used or tested.

I don't know whether it'd be related to CMOS or not, I can't really think of why it would be, it seems like it's more related to aggressive noise reduction. I didn't put the HV20 to that kind of test, and that's the only other CMOS video camera I've had my hands on, so maybe it's CMOS-related but I don't see why it should be.
 
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OgdenStudios said:
My question is: If one is thinking about the PMW-EX1, why not consider the HPX-500? For an extra couple grand you can get into a nice shoulder-mount camera.
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The EX-1 is $6700. The cheapest HPX package with a lens is around $16k-17k, and that doesn't allow for any P2 cards. Hardly a next step up, IMO.

Honestly I'd be hard-pressed to think that there are many who would be trying to decide between these two. Totally different budgets- and the question of shoulder mount versus handheld alone seems enough to separate the types of shooters looking for a new system. Just my two cents.

EDIT

Whoops, didn't read carefully enough...William Robinette said basically the same thing up above.
 
Steve Shovlar said:
There's a EX1 V HVX200 shootout here.
http://www.pairofhands.net/Ex1 vs HVX Shootout.html

Looking at the footage and stills, the EX1 wins. Unfortunately the cameras were not white balanced.
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That's DEFINITELY a surprise to me. Because, it looks like the EX-1 is the one being misrepped so early in it's life. Stills do nothing. The video posted there makes the EX-1 look like garbage, honestly.

The sky rendered in the skateboard footage looks like bad greenscreen. The motion rendering is really strange-looking when the guy's moving. People really do see with different eyes, I would DEFINITELY choose the HVX over the EX-1 if this was the footage that was going to make or break my decision.

Again, Stills mean very little when you consider the camera isn't made to produce stills, but moving images.
 
The EX1 is sharper, that´s for sure.
But when you look at the EX1´s colours and contrast in the skateboard clip: it looks awful. Videoish at its worst. Ridiculous.
Hopefully with some tweaking the EX1 could look better, because if this is all there is, the HVX wins big time.

On screen it´s not only the resolution that counts, it is colours, contrast and mood.
When thinking of an afternoon in the sun, you think of the pictures that were shot with the HVX.

If only my HVX wouldn´t have this chromatic aberration issue in full tele, I´d love it dearly.:crybaby:
 
In my mind, Philip Bloom has already demonstrated that the EX-1 is capable of stunning footage. I think that Barry's synopsis of his time with the EX-1 already has made up my mind that I think that the HVX suits my needs better.

Daktulus, hate to say it but CA isn't going to matter to 99.96% of most audiences. All of the low end cameras and many high end cameras have it. Light and compose well and have killer sound and most people will take your project as a quality piece of work. The rest is story and concept. Things like CA are for us nit pickers but as far as audiences, they could care less and will never notice it.

Dan
 
It's really funny what we'll nitpick about here on DVXuser (I'm guilty as well, s'why I grouped myself with the term). Watching MUSIC AND LYRICS with my girlfriend last night, I noticed "halo" Bokeh in the background that was VERY apparent. It was two green lights that looked like the XH-A1 smudge effect that we saw with Kaku Ito's early footage.

I remember people complaining and goin' on about it, then I see it in this big budget movie existing in plain sight and I realize that it just isn't any sort of deal breaker.

And neither is CA, High Resolutions (Please see: Soderbergh's success and the upcoming CLOVERFIELD movie (reported to be helmed on HVX200's, proof still pending).

But, we've already beat this specific horse to a bloody mess of blood and bone shard.
 
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