Sony XDCAM EX

I will definitly Rent one, and try it out. im excited by the prospect of 1920X1080P native.....
 
Sony camera also has the history of steady continuous dropping down in price. The Z1 at B&H has dropped around $1900 since its launch day.

So, if you dont need it, you might want to wait for a few months and hope the price will drop down a bit.
 
It feels great, the weight of the camera and the feel of it's focus lens is just great. I spent about 1hour molesting the camera at the Sony booth. The Focus Ring has a stop function when it is on manual. the ris ring is also a great improvment, on more small dial. It is an actual ring on the lens.

The best part is that it is like the Z1 but better. It does PAL and NTSC, with frame rate from 1 to 60. 1080 and 720 HDV. And it about 6500euros says the sony rap. The 8gig cards about400euros and 16gig 750euros.

Looks like this is the next thing on my list instead of the HVX
 
DavidChia said:
The best part is that it is like the Z1 but better. It does PAL and NTSC, ............
Click to expand...
No it doesn't, and this lack of SD capability I consider the main drawback to the camera for many users. (And a disadvantage compared to the Z1.)

What is does seem to do are the 50 and 60Hz varieties of both 720 and 1080 HD (so it's suitable for use in both Europe and US/Japan), but "PAL" and "NTSC" refer specifically to Standard Definition.
 
Simon Wyndham said:
And because NLE's are so good at down conversion these days editors might as well just choose the resolution at output if they require SD.
Click to expand...
Assuming the NLE can easily handle HD - it's quite probable that a user may want to upgrade their camera before the NLE. There is also the time taken to render, and it seems quite likely that the EX may find a place as second camera in a shoot which is otherwise SD. It would be far simpler (and save time) to just use it in SD mode for now, then switch to HD as the main production goes that way.
 
Simon Wyndham said:
Wrong, quite simply. The EX is one stop more sensitive than the 350. The EX is rated as f10 compared to f9 for the 350 and f7 for the Z1. I can also confirm having used it that putting up the gain is also very low in noise.
Click to expand...

Can you make that an ISO appoximation? i dont undestant what F10 @ 2000 lux means in comarison to other cameras.
 
"Wrong, quite simply. The EX is one stop more sensitive than the 350. The EX is rated as f10 compared to f9 for the 350 and f7 for the Z1. I can also confirm having used it that putting up the gain is also very low in noise."

What I have noticed is that when a camera is not performing very well in the "lux" area, it is not mentioned by the manufacturer.
A 1/2" sensor camera should be better than a 1/3" sensor one or not? Can you say that the EX is as sensitive to light as the PD170? If not, than IMHO it is a good camera, but not very attractive to documentary shooters.
 
Can anybody confirm whether or not Sony will release a firmware update that will allow monitoring off-speed shooting on a separate monitor? As Mikko points out that would be a huge deal killer for steadicam/crane/remote work, not to mention there'd be some pissed off directors and producers hanging around video village...;)
 
the inability to monitor offspeed stuff is rediculous, thats probably just a Beta model glitch.. i think its IMPOSSIBLE for them to release a camera that cant monitor off speed stuff.. thats just ... insane if it goes out of the door like that. Esecially if youre doing 35 adpter work, stedicam, crane, or car mounted shots..... i just dont think It will be released that way.

Great news if its 1920x1080 and still faster than a HVX. thats GREAT news. I for one am excited, just hope it doesnt "wobble" with thoes Cmos sensors.
 
I questioned the live outputs myself many times.
It appears that Sony's take is "There is no standard for that framerate, so we won't output a signal at all" I too hope that I'm wrong and that the final version will have some soft of live output at all times.

Timur, It does wobble, just not very much.

- Mikko
 
Hey Barry,

Is this something that can be easily spotted on a 42" HD screen or this something that is small? Is it firmware fixable or this a product of engineering design? And lastly, besides whip pans, rickety hand held shots, fast action, and flashing lights, is there anything else a rolling shutter/cmos chip video camera can't handle well? :)
 
Well there goes, "handheld" shaky cam and high shutterspeed pans.....

its VERY visible. The top half of the screenmoves while the botom half doesnt... i will post an image of the effect. My cell phone camera does that. Had it been the other kind of sensor, like a CCD, the cables would have been straight, not wavy and looking like the bridge is collapsing.



1189557423.jpg
 
Last edited:
cannes1979 said:
Is this something that can be easily spotted on a 42" HD screen or this something that is small?
Click to expand...
Let's be clear on something: I don't know the extent of the wobble on the EX1. I've seen it on the HV20 and it's extreme. I've seen it on the V1U and it's significant. I don't know how much is on the EX1. So I can talk about rolling shutter in general, but we don't know how much of that will or won't apply to the EX1.

Is it firmware fixable or this a product of engineering design?
Click to expand...
It's part and parcel of the sensor design. There's nothing fixable about it unless they redesign the chip to somehow minimize it. There are two types of shutters that can be employed on a CMOS chip, a "global" or a "rolling" shutter. Nobody that I can think of does CMOS with a "global" shutter, but I sure wish they did! That's the way a CCD works. Instead, everyone that I can think of uses a "rolling" shutter (Sony, Canon, Infinity, Red, everyone). And they all have some manner or degree of wobble to them (and skew and partial exposure). But Red says they "were aware of the issues and they fixed them", so I don't know what that means exactly -- they haven't shared their design publicly, of course -- but perhaps it means multiple zones reading off at the same time or something.

In any case, wobble is inherent in the rolling shutter design, so if it uses a rolling shutter it's gonna wobble. I guess the question is how much? If it's an infitesimally small amount, and has no real bearing on the video, then it's a non-issue in my book (heck, CCDs have huge vertical smear on overexposed light sources and nobody seems to get hung up about that!)

And lastly, besides whip pans, rickety hand held shots, fast action, and flashing lights, is there anything else a rolling shutter/cmos chip video camera can't handle well? :)
Click to expand...
The rolling shutter introduces certain artifacts into the imaging system. If your type of shooting is affected by those artifacts, then it's a problem. You have to understand the nature of the "wobble" to know whether it's going to be a problem or not in the type of footage you're shooting.

Personally, I'm not too worried about general skew. A little leaning left or right during a fast pan isn't much of a dealbreaker to me for most circumstances. But the stretching and shrinking issue is a problem. If you pan left or right you'll get leaning images, most everyone seems to know that. But what if you tilt up or down? Well, then you'll either get stretching (the whole image can get elongated as if it's being stretched out) or scrunched (smushed up so everyone looks like they're shorter) during the move. That's a problem. And now, if you combine the stretching and scrunching with the left leaning and the right leaning, now you understand where the "wobble" comes from.

So now you have to think about the circumstances you're going to put the camera in. If you're shooting locked-down interview shots, there's no motion of the sensor vs. the image, so there'll be no stretching or scrunching or skewing, so you've got no problem. Or if you're mounted on a tripod and executing a slow pan, so that the top of the image and the bottom of the image are exposed while still in reasonably the same position, you have no problem. But what if you put the camera in a situation where there's vibration? Where it moves up a tiny amount and down a tiny amount, and maybe tilts left or right just a little bit? Well, that's where you have a wholesale wobble disaster, as exemplified by Russ Andersson's helicopter footage. So if you're shooting footage with the camera mounted on a car, on a stickypod, on a cinesaddle, or on a helicopter or a boat, you might encounter a perfect storm for rolling-shutter problems. (or maybe you won't -- maybe that particular camera has been optimized to be able to handle that -- but on the HV20 it definitely happens.)

So whip-pans, I'm not worried about. Shaky handheld footage -- well, actually, yes, that's a problem because that style has been "in vogue" for a while. If you want to shoot your own "Bourne Supremacy" type of film, a rolling shutter cam may very well be the wrong tool for that job.

But the two worst scenarios are the ones where I think people will get bitten the worst, because they're perfectly reasonable shooting scenarios and there's no reason to think that the camera wouldn't be able to cope. The first would be things like wedding receptions or news conferences. Even if you've got the camera perfectly steady on a tripod, so no motion is induced, a bright flash will only get exposed on part of the frame. If it only happens once you might be okay with it, but if several flashes go off, it can look really gnarly.

The other is if you shoot under any sort of strobelight or flickering light. Let's say you shoot at 1/48th shutter under some older fluorescent lights... in that case, you'll see vertical scrolling bars of off-color orange nastiness scrolling up your screen! That's bad, and that's something that old-school shooters won't be prepared for and won't understand what happened. But it happens in a rolling shutter because the rolling shutter exposes different parts of the frame at different times, and the fluorescent light is cycling while that shutter's exposing -- so parts of the frame will be exposed when the light is at its brightest, and other parts when the light is at its dimmest. So you'll get color-changing scrolling bands appearing all throughout your video, in a scenario where you otherwise wouldn't expect anything bad to happen. (a modern high-frequency ballast will avoid this, but I wonder how older magnetic-ballast HMI lights will do?)

And of course there's the potential issues with motion tracking -- if the image is changing shape and stretching and shrinking during a normal move, how can composited graphics elements expect to keep up?

Rolling shutter is something that we as shooters are going to have to be acutely aware of. If the manufacturers can somehow overcome all these issues, then hopefully someday we can go back to blissfully ignoring all this. But until then, I've heard confirmation that the Infinity, the Red, the EX1, the V1U, the HV20, and the small Sony cameras all exhibit this rolling shutter effect (to greater or lesser extent). So it's something any new buyer would do very well to educate themselves on. It doesn't have to mean that "rolling shutter = dealbreaker", but for some particular uses it may mean exactly that. For others it'll be a non-issue. But you would be wise to learn what the effects are, so you know whether your camera can cope with what you're throwing at it.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top