Shooting with Sony EX-1

S

sheppard

New member
Dear all,

Next month I have to shoot something with three SONY EX-1 cameras.

I've never been using SONY EX-1 cameras so I know nothing about it.

Is there any progressive/interlace quality differences?

Can you tell me what are EX-1 weaknesses?

Are there firmware & hardware issues? If they exist tell me how to solve them on a field.

Can You share some tips with me?


Thank You!
 
Spend a few hours trolling through the past threads here and you'll gain a wealth of knowledge. Pay particular attention to the Picture Profile talks.
 
You're at the right place. Go through the over 113 pages of threads and you'll find plenty of information. If there is a particular issues you're after use the Search Forum button at the upper right portion of every thread list page.
 
Sheppard, there may be a few things we can tell you to get you going before digging through a sea of information.

You say you are shooting with three EX-1s. A couple of things that need to be known is: Are you doing a 3 camera shoot? Is the shooting occurring over a period of time. Is the shooting going to be lit with lighting? If so what kind? Most importantly for getting the settings right: what is your final delivery format. Is it for the web? Is it for broadcast: cable TV, episodic, news. Or is it for a variety of delivery formats/destinations. Be clear on that.

The EX series cameras are prosumer cameras with near broadcast specs. There are few weaknesses to the camera. If you set it up correctly for the delivery format you are good. There is the CMOS rolling shutter issue but it is largely overblown. It rears it's head most prominently in situations where flash cameras are going off like in a wedding reception or if you do a whip pan but even then you have to be doing some wild fast pans for the skew in rolling shutter matters to be seen.
 
It strikes me that it will be nearly impossible to a 3 camera shoot justice if you don't know anything about the camera.
 
Andrew Stone said:
Sheppard, there may be a few things we can tell you to get you going before digging through a sea of information.

You say you are shooting with three EX-1s. A couple of things that need to be known is: Are you doing a 3 camera shoot? Is the shooting occurring over a period of time. Is the shooting going to be lit with lighting? If so what kind? Most importantly for getting the settings right: what is your final delivery format. Is it for the web? Is it for broadcast: cable TV, episodic, news. Or is it for a variety of delivery formats/destinations. Be clear on that.

The EX series cameras are prosumer cameras with near broadcast specs. There are few weaknesses to the camera. If you set it up correctly for the delivery format you are good. There is the CMOS rolling shutter issue but it is largely overblown. It rears it's head most prominently in situations where flash cameras are going off like in a wedding reception or if you do a whip pan but even then you have to be doing some wild fast pans for the skew in rolling shutter matters to be seen.
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It will be a 3 camera shoot in a exterior during daylight. It's a boat racing event. The delivery format should be 1080/25p or 1080/50i (i am waitng for the conformation) for a TV station. I am familiar with a rollng shutter (flash issues, fast pans etc...) I own a few REDs.

BTW, Should I use -3db? I've read somewhere that the image is much cleaner.
 
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sheppard said:
It will be a 3 camera shoot in a exterior during daylight. It's a boat racing event. The delivery format should be 1080/25p or 1080/50i (i am waitng for the conformation) for a TV station. I am familiar with a rollng shutter (flash issues, fast pans etc...) I own a few REDs.

BTW, Should I use -3db? I've read somewhere that the image is much cleaner.
Click to expand...

Use -3dB if you're shooting night footage. Doing so during the day won't gain you much. More importantly you'll lose a bit of highlight detail because the circuit clamps down.

I was thinking the same thing Duke. Using a camera you're unfamiliar with on an important shoot is usually not a good idea. It's like me with carpentry tools, LOL.
 
Another excellent source of information is Doug Jensen's (Vortex Media) book and DVDs on the EX1. I refer to them all the time.
 
adamr316 said:
Use -3dB if you're shooting night footage. Doing so during the day won't gain you much. More importantly you'll lose a bit of highlight detail because the circuit clamps down.

I was thinking the same thing Duke. Using a camera you're unfamiliar with on an important shoot is usually not a good idea. It's like me with carpentry tools, LOL.
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-3db only limits highlights to 100IRE in a certain std gamma curve, the rest, highlights above 100IRE are preserved. After hearing all the rumors about this I tested it myself and highlight retention above 100IRE can be verified for all but one std curve, wish I could remember which one. I know at least std 3 retains all info, it's a pretty nice curve

Also, no idea how bright it is where you are but I've never been able to get away with using 0 or even 3db gain at night and have anything show up, let alone -3db :) if you're shooting a well lit scene and are white balanced towards more blue gain, (3200k for instance), then -3db helps take out the midtone noise arising from adding so much gain to the blue channel
 
Thank You very much all of You.

There are many topics where I can find the rest of the informations.

In a 3 weeks I will get the cameras to test them and set them.

I will update you how it ended up after the shooting.
 
if they are the original EX1's then IR filters are a must unless you like muddy/magenta blacks. id ask if your renting them about these filters. if i recall i bought the Tiffen IR for about 60-70 bucks.

also if youve never handheld these prepare yourself for fatigue and pain if handholding for any length of time IMO. for me when i do handhold i rotate the grip on the right "forward" then drop the camera to about upper chest position/aiming the eyepiece VF upwards. can hold much longer this way.

audio is not the best IMO. easy to overload the limiters and not so pretty audio espescially when recording very loud and unruly sounds.

when panning my experiene is the image gets sloppy and more mushy that other cameras ive had (CCD) i know RED is CMOS too but the EX1 is more sloppy when panning. im not fond of it for sports vs my HMC150. just my opinion of course.

thought i would share a few of the little quirks. great camera just the same!

david
 
david_p said:
audio is not the best IMO. easy to overload the limiters and not so pretty audio espescially when recording very loud and unruly sounds.
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Um, I can actually definitely say, the audio is the best, until you're in the range of $15k+ camera bodies. The built in preamps are some of the best I've heard, you just need to set them up right. From what you're saying it sounds like you're using the auto function for the audios gain, don't ever do that. Set it to manual, keep the 2 knobs on the side halfway between 5 and 6 (this is zero gain for the circuitry), then set your levels in the cameras audio menu using the mic trim function. Adjust them so your audio is peaking around 3 to 4 segments below red. Then you will have a pristine audio path only adding the proper amount of gain in one stage, and staying way off the limiters. if you skip this, run auto, and adjust using the knobs on the side, you are adding gain using the preamp, then either adding or lowering more gain via the knobs, THEN the cameras auto circuitry will do the same once more after that to try and guess where to keep the levels, all whilst hitting the limiters every decent peak. A terrible signal chain. Run manual!

I'm sure Basspig will jump in, he's used this camera with some very very nice mics to record orchestras and the result was in his words, unbelievable.

Happy shooting!
 
Agreed Fohdeesha. Especially with firmware 1.12 I think it was the auto gain reduction isn't an issue.

I was shooting an event today with race cars. When the car was started up (which is LOUD) no break up.

I've attempted to overload the audio circuits. With the newer firmware it saturates but never appears to break up/digitally distorts. This is screaming into my mic with the audio gain knobs at 10. I still play it safe of course when I record but still that's pretty darn incredible and I'm sure cameras costing $30,000 10 years ago didn't have this good of audio circuits built-in.
 
Amen to that! the rate at which technology advances is just absurd, Who knows how long until $300 cameras are doing the same and people can't believe how much we paid. Interesting bit about the the limiters, never tried that! Good to know
 
Here are some examples of audio I recorded with my EX1 (with 1.15 firmware):


Ambient pickup with after market on-camera X-Y mic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKtDeS-w2wo&hd=1

Ambient pickup at Front of House with pair of ORTF placement studio condenser mics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hK62humDN4&hd=1

Here's another with on-cam X-Y mic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfIoOhqk-r8&hd=1

The newer firmware definately improves the alignment of the protection limiter with the digital clip level, so it's much more transparent than the older firmware.

S/N is impressive. On a fireworks behind the scenes shoot, I had forgotten to turn both 48V phantom power on and as a result, my Rode NT4 didn't produce any 'usable' output. All audio was peaking at -56dB. I normalized in post and it was about as clean as audio from a Sony VX2000 with optimal record levels. These are very quiet preamps for a camera.

I use this audio for backup audio Balcony mixes when I record symphony concerts at the Bridgeport Symphony. Primary audio is an 8 channel Firewire system recording to a laptop DAW backstage. I give it an A for quality of audio in all aspects.
 
alright then, i stand corrected.

thanks to the 3 posters above me in reference to the audio on the EX1. will definitely check out all of these suggestions! never got the results you all are getting even in manual mode.

david
 
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