Starting Monday Panasonic will be giving away a free 16gig P2 card with every HVX purchase. Hot off the press.

Not bad, not bad. But they might want to answer with some new hardware. The EX1 hype machine is picking up steam and since Panny hasn't even announced anything yet, it'll be a while before a product makes it to market given their past track record.
Unless there's a problem with the EX1 when it hits the streets, the only thing Panny can do at this point to keep people from dumping their money into Sony's pockets is to announce a new camera.

May be a good thing. The Sony has been outsold 10 to 1 by Panasonic lately so the drought may get some rain. There are trade offs either way with compression and time tested ability. We have done the side by side with the EX HVX and 500. I must say I am impressed but then again all three do some incredible things.

May be a good thing. The Sony has been outsold 10 to 1 by Panasonic lately so the drought may get some rain. There are trade offs either way with compression and time tested ability. We have done the side by side with the EX HVX and 500. I must say I am impressed but then again all three do some incredible things.

What did you find from that test?

In a lot of ways the EX is more sensitive to light than the 200 and right up there with the 500 but that seems right because of the chip size. Also lets not forget the picture going to the monitor via hd/sdi is not gonna be the same picture after a compression rate of 35hq or 25mb(like HDV). So theoretically the best setup would be an EX tapped to an AJA box tapped to a laptop.

Does it matter that the cheapest lens for the 500 is about the same price as the entire PMWEX1? (as an example of other "minor" differences)

If you believe all the glossy hype about the EX1 then by all means, jump on board, but I can't imagine using any camera at any price or format that uses a rolling shutter. That feature alone would keep me away from the Sony regardless what else it's capable of.

No doubt, Sony has created what basically amounts to a tapeless Z1 - on steriods. Nice features, especially lens controls and from the quick time we had with the pre-production model it's definitely user-friendly with good menu structure and the large, high-res flip-out LCD and better "low-light" performance.

But what it all comes down to is image quality. Forget about color space, bitrates blah, blah... if you haven't seen what a rolling shutter does to imagery then you're in for a shock.

Sony could have easily produced an HVX killer but just like with the other XDCAM models they've shot themselves in the foot with goofy visual engineering that just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Comparing the EX1 to the HPX500 is a waste of time; the two have completely different markets and missions. The EX1 fits squarely in the same market as all the other handheld, fixed-lens cameras and should be compared to the same. The HPX500's competitors are the other ENG-type, shoulder rigs that have removable lens mounts and 2/3" inch chips.

Check out the posts from Barry and look at the various samples now available on the web about EX1 rolling shutter. If you can live with smear, image skew and other nasty, can't-be-fixed-in-post issues, then be my guest and buy the EX1.

Rolling shutter, image skew, smear, all sounds like what MP3 does to the sound, shifting phase, in correct balance of frequency distribution, different impression of the songs' dynamics.

As far as I know, with the rolling shutter issue and the MPEG issue combination, HDV and XDCAM are only good for static or almost static shots.
Sony knows that those issues won't change the sales of EX1 and HDV cams much.

As far as I know, with the rolling shutter issue and the MPEG issue combination, HDV and XDCAM are only good for static or almost static shots.



HDV, I agree
XDCAM 35mb.. No way, rock solid.

HDV, I agree
XDCAM 35mb.. No way, rock solid.

If bitrate was all it took to make good imagery then the HVX would never have made the splash on the market that it has. The issue with the EX1 isn't XDCAM's bitrate - which has little to do with overall image quality. Take a look at the various posts by Barry and others both here on the forum and on the examples on the web and you'll see for yourselves where and why the EX1 falls short.

In other words, why should Pany has to fear Sony then? Why are they giving away one 16GB P2 - if the HVX202 is that superior to the EX1? I own a HVX202 - and I don't think the Pany's product is any inferior to Sony's EX1. I produce excellent videos from the HVX202. Prior camera was a Canon XL2. There is something I have to "kudos" to Sony - their marketing is dammed good.

HDV, I agree
XDCAM 35mb.. No way, rock solid.

I heard it happens on XDCAM, take the cam to mountain, follow mountainbiker going fast in front of forest. If XDCAM passes that, it would be rock solid, then I will be interested. HDV is mostly okay, but it fails my needs in the mountain.

My friend tested EX1 at InterBEE and it appeared to have rolling shutter problem. Not as much he expected but it is still there. I wish they would fix it as much as I want Panasonic to make HVX better light sensitivity and higher resolution.

EX1 is over $8000 in Japan, so there's nothing by Panasonic in that price range. So, fill in the gap with something like HVX300 wouldn't be a bad idea.

I looked at the EX-1 a few days ago guys and it is one hell of a camera. I couldn't get it to exhibit any rolling shutter problems though no doubt it must under some circumstances but i would be a little more circumspect in knocking a piece of gear you've never seen.

It does have vignetting issues and those do seem serious. I don't know if they are fixable at this point, but Panny will have to bust their butt to respond to this camera. Stiil don't know about green screen as its 4:2:0 but don't knock in theory until you've seen it in practice.

As for overall image quality - Barry hasn't said anything about that from what I've seen anywhere - and let me tell you this camera looks very very good. I don't know 35Mbits or long GOP from breakfast cereal so editing issues I can't speak about.

I've seen the camera at InterBEE. Also, the images from Phil Bloom are great.
So, I have no doubt that EX1 would be great for most of people, but I won't expect so much for using this cam for many of my needs.

I'm speaking from my experiences with Sony's handling and attitude towards media (both music and video) quality that I don't trust. They have been advertising 5.1 surround support of their consumer camcorders when it only records 4 channels and that could be edited to be 5.1, which mean it is not discrete 5.1 surround. Even mono audio can be edited to be 5.1 and they continue to advertise things are not discrete as discrete, I won't trust that company, so sorry but I have more doubts in Sony than most people, so you can take my opinions as other extreme. By the way, Sony is the company advertised Comact Disc being superior than Vinyl records and later, when they came out with Super Audio CD, they said CD could not be better than vinyl so they made SACD. Sony has so much technologies, so hope they put their minds in studying the media culture more carefully, so they can make person like me shut up.

However, I'm totally agree with Leonard about the good image quality that we've been seeing so far, they are all carefully shot and chosen. Sony can challenge me to let me use it for a couple of weeks to see if EX1 is really rock solid. In fact that is what I'm going to do as usual. I'd cover the story for my magazine column.

There's certainly push from EX1 against HVX200, there are many features and quality with EX1 that exceeds HVX200's, so certainly, Panasonic should come out with a model between HPX and HVX200.

Somewhere you posted a link to an article you did on the differences of CCD vs CMOS imagers and it's affect on images (I can't find it quickly) - care to post that link here so people can see exactly what the EX1's limitations are?

Somewhere you posted a link to an article you did on the differences of CCD vs CMOS imagers and it's affect on images (I can't find it quickly) - care to post that link here so people can see exactly what the EX1's limitations are?Better yet, perhaps Barry can simply post the article itself right here in its entirety-- that would be ideal.

Otherwise... http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22barry+green%22+cmos+ccd&btnG=Google+Search

The article is about rolling shutters in general, and the footage examples are from various rolling-shutter cameras. However, I have not had a chance to explore the EX1 for what limits its rolling shutter may cause.

Rolling shutter issues are potentially disastrous, or they may be a non-issue, it depends on what type of shooting scenarios you'll be putting the camera to. Offhand, I think kaku's proposed usage of strapping it to a mountain bike would be about the most awful scenario for any rolling-shutter camera. If the EX1 performs well in that type of environment, it'd be reasonably safe to say that Sony would have "beaten" the rolling shutter. The kind of vibration that a mountain bike would encounter would likely expose the worst shortcomings of a rolling shutter. (Kaku, have you tried an HV20 or HG10 or Sony 1-chip HDV camera on your mountain bikes? It would be very interesting to see how one of those performs, vs. an EX1, to see how much improvement Sony may have made in the EX1.)

The other suspect scenario for a rolling shutter that people are likely to encounter is flashes/strobelights. Shooting a nightclub, a red carpet event, a boxing match or other sporting event where a camera flash significantly illuminates the subject (i.e., not a football game, but something up close); a wedding reception, or a press conference... those could all be affected by the way a rolling shutter works.

Another potential trouble spot for a rolling shutter would be discontinuous lighting sources, such as slow-refresh HMI or fluorescents. Those can cause annoying flickering and banding in the video; Canon warns of "black lines" flickering in the video in their owner's manual.

Finally, there's match moving for motion tracking -- Russ Andersson (maker of SynthEyes) highly urges any FX professional to avoid all rolling-shutter CMOS cameras because of this.

Now -- how many of these potential scenarios are actual issues with the EX1? I don't know, I haven't used one yet. In the article I posted, I collected various samples from different shooters and different cameras. The EX1 wasn't out yet, so it isn't shown or represented yet.

Barry,

I did onboard and hand-held while I'm riding with HV20 and HV10 and they are awful. The video becomes really wobbly. So, I guess that is from the rolling shutter.

My friend did the flash light test at InterBEE on EX1 and he saw the rolling shutter effect present.

My other concern is the normal shooting condition, even with a tripod but panning with the speed of downhill mountainbiker in front of really edgy and complicated back ground, trees and grass especially. MPEG breaks up bad in that situation.

When testing the camera for rolling shutter affects, can you see them while shooting or while looking at the camera when not recording - Or do you need to look at the recorded footage

I tried very rapid pans for example and tried just bouncing the camera around a bit and it looked OK, but I didn't actually look at footage.

I did see some footage going over the SF Bay Bridge looking past the cables from the front windshield - that was pretty fast movement and I saw no breakup. Maybe a teeny bit of bending, but that may just have been the lens at wide zoom. Certainly nothing disturbing. I don't know if that's a reasonable test for rolling shutter.

Getting a bar from flash or strobe might be acceptable to me but I would need to look at it to know how bad it was.

To see the rolling shutter effects, you definitely need to look into the footage. Looking at the camera's LCD or viewfinder display won't do you good. Because the human eye is just too adaptable - can you see the flicker of a fluorescent tube (for example)?

How boring would it be if everyone used the same camera? Rolling shutter, Bit rate, ect... these are not hindrances. They are simply characteristics. Its like drawing with a pen or a pencil. Maybe Im just a simple country boy from a horse farm in Mississippi working a dream job in New York.(I am) And maybe I get to play with cameras all day and talk to people like you guys. (I do) But, I still cant see any one manufacturer being the end all of the motion picture story telling regardless of how many bells and whistles it comes with. If that happens I may get bored and start shooting with an old Oatmeal box camera:)

I still cant see any one manufacturer being the end all of the motion picture story telling regardless of how many bells and whistles it comes with.You've just summed up the overall philosophy of this site in one sentence. Happy to have you here, Gregger!

My concept is to combine affordable HD cams to achieve making great video (some day) of what I want to express, so the goal is to find out which does what good and which does what bad. That's all.

My concept is to combine affordable HD cams to achieve making great video (some day) of what I want to express, so the goal is to find out which does what good and which does what bad. That's all.

That's exactly the point, and what I try to get across. Know what the product does. Know what it can't do. We're entering a phase where shots that we used to be able to take for granted, all of a sudden aren't possible, because the technology is changing. So you have to know what the technology does, and what it can't do, in order to be properly forearmed and forewarned and go into your shooting situations with your eyes wide open.

I did onboard and hand-held while I'm riding with HV20 and HV10 and they are awful. The video becomes really wobbly. So, I guess that is from the rolling shutter.
Correct. That's what we're concerned about, because there are some types of shots that a rolling shutter can interfere with and, depending on the severity of the rolling shutter effect, can actually ruin the shot. You encountered it. The question people are asking is -- does the EX1 improve on this any? And I think you'd be a great test case -- you've put every camera on the market to the test, so if you can get an EX1 and try the same thing I think we'd all be very interested to know whether the reported improvement in the rolling shutter of the EX1 renders the concerns to be a non-issue, or whether it's still something we need to be aware of.

i shot lots of video using an HV10 on a car mount for b-roll of a triathlon broadcast, and i found that it was pretty clean. this had to be shot using the auto focus mode, because of the nature of it--we were just tracking significant parts of the bike course. so we had to make cuts where the lighting shifted, but it was just for continuity anyway, so it had no impact on our project. but it wasn't wobbly at all--held up quite well, i would say. so i wonder what it is that you're seeing that is "wobbly," kaku. wobbly as in juddering?

and just for information's sake, i know you have tested lots of cameras under these conditions. which were the hardest to break?

I put it on manual focus every time I do onboard.
Meryem, what is different in my onboard situation is the small vibrations from the road surface. I was thinking that was MPEG thing, but after I studies what Barry explained about rolling shutter then figured it out.

I can look for the footage.

if you don't mind, i'd be very interested. we shoot a lot of motion--not that extreme speed-wise, but definitely some bike-mounted stuff, some skiing, triathlon...and we have a few more of those sorts of projects are in the pipeline. i'm very interested in seeing what the EX1 resolve that other cams don't. it helps to know what to look for, to compare to....

After shooting around late at night with EX1, felt amazed with the low light situation (the best ever after various affordable cams), I thought this one one of the shot that demonstrates the amazing capabilities of EX1 with 1080/24p over 30 frame and the light sensitivities...., but I found out in the post, there is something wrong when a man with bag crossed in front of the camera. The shape of the taxi behind gets distorted.

Anyone can suggest to make it not happen?

http://web.mac.com/kakuito/KakugyoBlog/Podcast/Entries/2007/12/10_Sony_XDCAM_EX1_study_1.html

Hi Kaku, you're asking a question about the Sony EX1 but this is the Panasonic P2 forum. So I've copied your post over to our Sony XDCAM EX forum, here is the link: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=109876