Cinematographer

EX-1 Experiments: Shooting with Sony's XDCAM EX System
By Adam Wilt
Nov 18, 2007, 07:49

Sony's PMW-EX1 camcorder premiered under glass at NAB 2007, and I recently had a chance to work with an engineering sample. It wasn't a finished product, so I can't say anything definitive about its performance, but I was at least able to get a sense of how the camera handles and what sort of pictures it will likely make.

Branded with Sony's CineAlta label, the EX1 is a fixed-lens Handycam using three 1/2-inch CMOS sensors. It records either 1080- or 720-line HD on two SxS memory cards and offers variable frame rates. Clearly, the EX1 takes aim at Panasonic's P2-card-based HVX200.

Overall, the EX1 is slightly smaller than the HVX200. At about 4.7 lb., it's within a few ounces of the weight of the HVR-Z1 HDV camcorder and nearly a pound lighter than the HVX200. Visually, its lens predominates; with no tape transport taking up space, the body is comparatively short and fat, with Sony's SxS memory cards slotting in sideways.

The EX1's lens is a 14x Fujinon with features that bridge the gap between "real lenses" with full manual control used on higher-end camcorders and the servo lenses used on lower-level gear. Its zoom range of 5.8-81.2mm is about 31-440mm in 35mm still camera terms.

The focus ring slides forward and back a few millimeters; in its forward position, it acts like any other focus-by-wire system, offering full and momentary autofocus, manual override of autofocus, and a unique "MF assist" mode in which the lens fine-tunes your manual focusing to achieve ultimate sharpness, then stops, so it won't hunt or suddenly shift focus. With the focus ring pushed back, full manual mode is engaged. You have direct-coupled focus control, as on a "real lens," complete with a calibrated focusing scale.

The zoom ring is mechanically coupled and has a slide switch to enable or disable the zoom servo. The zoom has a good feel, and smooth manual zooms are easily performed.

The iris uses an external control ring complete with f-stop markings. You select servo or manual control, and you can set stops as easily and precisely with this lens as with any broadcast lens.

The lens is crisp and renders excellent detail with moderate flare. Full wide shows typical barrel distortion; zooming in just a bit results in a more rectilinear image with slight "mustache" distortion; by 15mm, distortion is practically gone for the rest of the zoom range. Lens-induced chromatic aberration was imperceptible; the camera may use CA compensation much like the latest Panasonic shoulder-mount cameras do.

There is vignetting at wide apertures from 10mm onwards, but Sony tells me that it's due to a bug in this engineering sample's auto-focus system, so I'll refrain from further commentary until I have a production model to work with.

The camera is the least handholdable Handycam I've used, handily displacing the HVX200 in this regard. Its handgrip is 4 inches off center laterally, and it's smoothly rounded. There's no flat surface, texture or sharp edge to gain any purchase on, so the camera cannot comfortably be held level with the right hand alone: it rotates in your grasp, sagging to the left. You can prop up the camera with your left hand, but not if you want that hand free to focus, zoom or adjust the iris. You can rotate the grip up to 90 degrees forward, changing the axis of insufficient resistance, but that only goes so far if you want to shoot at eye level. I predict a booming market in third-party shoulder stocks, body braces and other support systems once the EX1 ships.

Both EVF and LCD are super-sharp, and the camera offers a huge array of customizable VF displays, including depth-of-field scale, two zebras, area metering and a histogram, along with all the usual status readouts. All the overlays can be removed with a single button-push.

The "Exmor" 1/2-inch CMOS chips are quite sensitive (I measured ISO 320 at 1080/24p, the same as an HVX200) and very sharp at 0dB, though with gain boost, as on the HVR-V1, sharpness degrades. With 1920x1080 active photosites, progressive images are smoothly detailed out to around 1000 TVl/ph, with minimal aliasing of any sort; it's like having a miniature F900. Interlaced images showed some vertical aliasing, and there was some red/purple blooming on overexposed highlights; I hope these issues will be improved by the time the camera ships.

Out of the box, the EX1 renders light and color much like any other Handycam, but comprehensive adjustments--eight gamma presets, gamma and black gamma adjustment, knee point and slope, shadow and highlight saturation, linear matrix, detail level, frequency, sharpening and more--give you more tonal control than on any other sub-$10,000 camcorder. I aimed the EX1 at a contrasty outdoor scene alongside my HVX200 and (detail aside) got a similar picture, but with a few minutes in the Picture Profile menus, I had the camera capturing more highlight detail and seeing deeper into the shadows.

The EX1 has variable frame rates, fully adjustable from 1-30fps in 1080p and 1-60fps in 720p. Like the HVR-Z1, it is 50Hz/60Hz switchable for worldwide compatibility. It uses Long GOP MPEG-2 codecs for video, with a 25Mb/s SP mode capturing 1440x1080i and a 35Mb/s HQ mode capturing a full-raster 1920x1080 or 1280x720. All modes use 4:2:0 chroma subsampling. SP records 24p using 2:3 pull-down, but HQ 24p is a pure 24p recording.

Compression quality is very good: I was able to cause blocking artifacts to appear with radically jumpy, earthquake-like shakycam work, but on anything less frenetic, the images looked quite clean, even as still frames. My gut impression is that codec quality on this camera is a step above that of previous HDV and XDCAM HD camcorders, though I'd need to do more controlled testing to tell for certain.

Audio records as 48kHz, 16-bit uncompressed. The camera offers manual or auto gain, internal mic or XLR input, line or mic levels, and 48V phantom power, all selectable on a per-channel basis.

The camera records on two SxS cards, slotted in sideways. An 8GB card holds 25 minutes of HQ material or 35 minutes of SP material. Double those times for a 16GB card; double them again for dual 16s. SxS cards pop straight into ExpressCard/34 slots on laptops or can be mounted via USB 2 from the camera. Sony supplies clip browsing and transfer software for both Mac and PC. (I was able to transfer and view clips on my MacBook Pro, but FCP doesn't yet support the HQ codec.) The camera offers i.LINK (FireWire) for SP mode only; it's essentially an HDV-compatibility mode.

There is no SD recording mode--neither DV nor DVCAM. You can downconvert on output, but internally the choice is between 1080 and 720 HD.

The EX1 outputs HD-SDI or SD-SDI (reportedly including audio and timecode, though I didn't test this) on a standard, rear-mounted BNC. Its analog connectors are the same as on the HVR-V1: tiny, fragile D-shell connectors, one for component and the other for composite, audio and Y/C. These connectors are placed on the right, behind and beneath the rotating grip, in such a location that they cannot be used when the camera is handheld because the shooter's wrist is in the way.

Overall, the EX1 is a very promising camera: pin-sharp, sensitive imagers with what looks to be considerable latitude, variable frame rates, the benefits of solid-state recording, HD-SDI and lots of tweakability. It's painful to handhold, and the analog I/O cabling is sub-optimal, but those problems have to be set against what may yet be turn out to be the finest images in the sub-$10k field. I'll be very interested to put a production model EX1 through a rigorous evaluation.



© Copyright 2003 by United Entertainment Media, Inc.