Our PDW-F350 arrived yesterday, so Sony made good on their promise to ship the F350 before the end of March. I was worried CBS would be getting the entire production run for the next couple of months.

We snapped a pic of the F350 next to our XL H1 last night and posted it on our website (http://www.redhawk-development.com then go to "Features" then go to "PDW-F350L Test"). "Save Target As" rather than "Save Picture As" downloads higher res version of the picture. Or left click and then "Save Picture as" once it is done downloading. The only video on that site (on the "Baja Sur" page) is from the XL H1. We will post video and test results for the PDW-F350 over the next day or two.

We spent most of last night just setting up the PDW-F350 (we have the Fujinon 1/2" lens) and playing with the menus. I was very pleased that our resolution tests showed the F350 to be the same or slightly better than the XL H1 (that was at 60i, will test 24P and such today or tomorrow).

Image quality looks very good so far. Ergonomics of the camera are excellent. We will try to do some chroma key and wire removal work today, which will be a real test of the image quality. So far we are only using the HD SDI output, we have not recorded to the disc. Hopefully we will get to that in the next day or two.

Wow, congratulations Michael, as far as I know you're the first F350 owner in North America. Thanks for sharing this and I'm looking forward to anything else you care to share. Sent you an email. Much appreciated,

I see a Manual/Servo switch labeled Focus in that pic.

That's just for remote focus, right? That's not an autofocus thing like the cheaper Canon AF lens they're packaging with the 330, right?

Really looking forward to hearing more about this camera from the user point of view.

Keep us posted.

The lens is manual focus only. Servo just means it has a servo actuator and can be controlled by a PC or by a zoom/focus controller from Fujinon or others.

Working on tests of latitude (dynamic range) right now. The F350 looks 1.5-2.5 stops better than the Canon XL H1, although we are still playing with DCC (auto-knee, which is sort of cheating, so we usually turn it off) white clip, gamma, etc. We are using the test Paul Wheeler suggests in his 24p book, as well as a more rigorous version of the test using a waveform monitor, plus some real outdoors shots with difficult lighting. A simple shot of dense and darkly shadowed trees with bright clouds and sky visible in the background looks very good. You can see deep into the shadows but also see very detailed cloud formations alternating with blue sky without the highlights being blown out. There is no way to do that shot with the Canon.

This afternoon we will be shooting some green screen shots. So far so good.

Mike..congrats on the new F350! It looks sweet! Do you plan on doing any over/under cranking test soon? I am curious as to the quality. There have been reports that anything over 30fps is half rez, so any test or feedback you could give on this would be huge for us that can't wait until NAB.

Also, I went to your website and see that you produce a sport fishing show. I have been shooting and editing outdoor fishing shows for the last 10 years as well. Love the shots you have on the site. Where does your show air..broadcast or cable? What's the name of the show? Can I get watch it here in Florida?

Hi Scott. We have not done over/undercranking yet. Sony did tell us that anything over 30fps is 1/2 vertical res. We should get to testing that in the next couple of days.

We did shoot some green screen test material. Sony had warned me that the HDSDI was not true 4:2:2 but rather was generated from the 4:2:0 captured by the imager. It definitely shows in trying to do any chroma keying, and the results are consistent with our earlier tests on the HDC-X300.

Whereas the XL H1 pulls a clean matte with almost no work, the XDCAM HD produces a very noisy matte and suffers from severe edge crawl. We are planning to post some very short clips comparing the XL H1 and the F350 using Avid SpectraMatte and the Boris keying effect. Those should be up by tomorrow night I hope. I would guess that with work one can still get to the right end point, but it will take more work than with a true 4:2:2 solution.

My overall impression right now is that the F350 is a very well-designed and rugged ENG camera with great ergonomics and a good image. It has excellent lattitude and very low vertical smear. If Sony had output true 4:2:2 on the HDSDI this camera would be almost perfect. The 4:2:0 nature of the camera limits it for FX work and also means there is less color resolution in general when using the HDSDI. If you are planning to use the camera untethered (no cable) and work exclusively from the material recorded on the disc, then this limitation is not really a factor since most of the competitors are 4:2:0.

We need to play more with resolution in 24P. We are getting very good resolution out of 60i (700-750 lines) but that seems to drop to 600-650 in 24P. This may well be an issue with our settings or test environment. We will learn more about how to use the camera properly over the next few days/weeks.

While not really expecting it to work, we tried using the firewire on the F350 in FAM (Sony's file access mode) to import a clip (MXF) into Avid. We got a message that the file was not a supported XDCAM format. Given that we now have the camera (and lots of Avid stuff) we will see if we can work with Avid to give us early access to their XDCAM HD support, which has been reported to be available in Q3. We don't need proxy support, just the ability to import clips would be great.

Ingest via HDSDI into Avid Adrenaline works fine. We have used that for both live recording and playback of clips from the XDCAM disc.

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the great info. Yes I agree that if sony would have made the camera with 4:2:2 it would be ideal. You said that you have the fujinon lens right? What is the model number and the cost of that lens?

The Fujinon lens is the HSs18x5.5BRD, see http://www.fujinonbroadcast.com/cgi-bin/products.cgi?p=336

I think the list price is roughly twice the Canon lens referenced by Nate which is included in the PDW-F330K package from Sony (Sony lists the lens as a $7k option for the F350). I had that lens with an HDC-X300K. This Fujinon is certainly worth twice as much. I expect Canon and others will introduce more 1/2" high quality HD glass at NAB. As has been posted many times elsewhere on DVInfo, buy the best lens you can get.

I don't think I answered your question earlier about our projects. All I can say at this point is that we are a new organization, we have two projects funded, and we will be happy to let you know when they are publicly aired/distributed.

The reason we focus on lattitude as one of the key requirements for a camera is visible in some of the material you probably saw on our site. We shoot outdoors (SportFishing and such) where we have no control over the lighting. When the fishing cockpit is white fiberglass in direct Baja sunlight and the water is deep dark blue and the boat is backing down on a marlin and twisting and turning (and moving the shadows and sun in random directions), and the crew is pulling in the teasers and lures and throwing out baited lines, and you get two or more fish on, and you are in rough seas...things can get chaotic, as you well know. It is easy to burn out highlights or underexpose key material, but that's why we need such nice toys!

Now if I could just get a hand-held, gyro-stablized system for holding the camera steady (inspite of the seas) referenced either to the horizon or the deck (or any point in the frame!) that is small enough to maneuver around an active boat and rugged enough to handle sea water and general abuse ... in the meantime I will just learn to be a better operator and hope for calm seas.

Re: stabilizer:

http://www.ken-lab.com/stabilizers.html

I mentioned yesterday that we were getting good results with 60i resolution tests but having some difficulty with 24P. Sony has given me some ideas on how to improve performance. We will let you know how it goes.

I should mention that support and technical assistance from Sony and our Sony dealer (Snader) has been outstanding. For me I am choosing a company as much as a camera, and Sony seems to be an excellent company. That is probably an important part of the evaluation that I should have mentioned earlier.

Thanks Bill, I was hoping someone on DVInfo would have a suggestion. I will give it a try.

Mike, thinks for keeping us posted on this camera, I think everyone is really wanting this to be the one. I'm also interested in the latitude of the camera, especially as I haven't been too impressed with the Z1 performance in this area. Have you tried any indoor shots where you've got your subject and a window in the frame? That's usually a pretty good test.

Looking forward to hearing more.

We will try the daylight window & interior shot and post the results. You are right, that is a good test.

I accidentally discovered that 24P with the shutter off gives full resolution (700-750 lines) but it drops to 600 lines at 1/48th. That most likely means I don't have things set up quite right yet, but when I finally do the camera will do full rez at 24P fine. I think it has something to do with 2:3 pulldown. We will sort it out over the next day or so.

Jay, the Sony XDCAM HD demo you can download has some nice shots that show pretty good latitude, lots of strong backlight, etc.

I don't know whether to thank you or not Bill. Now that I've seen that footage, I have to buy one! Much better look than the 1/3" cams with a real lens and pro ergonomics to boot.

As promised, we have now posted up some Chroma key tests with XL H1 and the F350 (see http://www.redhawk-development.com/xl_h1_vs_f350_-_chroma_key.htm. We kept it simple (no hair). This was all done with Avid SpectraMatte.

You can see that the Canon does a better job since it is true 4:2:2 output. As I said earlier the F350 is a great camera, but it would be much better if the HDSDI was full 4:2:2 (rather than generated from 4:2:0).

This test is just to show which is easier in doing a minimum effort key. With effort you can make any of these look better.

(That drill has starred in a lot of effects clips here recently...)

One of the other things about HD (HDV) is the camera sensitivity. On the 1/3" cameras, it seems you need a lot more light than with a comparable SD camera. So far, what are your thoughts on this cameras abilities in lower light situations? How much sensitivity do you lose when switching over to the 24P mode from 60i?

The above link to the Chroma Key test does not seem to work completely reliably. You can go to the home page (http://www.redhawk-development.com/) then browse to Features and then Chroma Key Test.

Jay I will try to quantify the sensitivity attributes (relative to the XL H1, which is quite sensitive for a 1/3" camera). I can tell you that the slow shutter function on the F350 works quite well and (as advertised) produces a relatively low noise image compared to cranking up gain. Of course, you will have motion blur in that mode.

If I'm not wrong, will there be available footage concerning your new F350 or not?

Yes there will be footage posted. There is a little bit of green screen footage available now at http://www.redhawk-development.com/ in the "Features" section.

Tomorrow we should be posting some simple slow motion shots (effects done in Avid, not in-camera) done just to test the 35Mbps codec and how it interacts with Avid. Bottom line is that the image recorded to disc looks just about as good as the image captured through the HDSDI even after moderate post processing (which can amplify artifacts).

Lots to do and only certain footage can be posted, but more test footage will be posted over the next week or so.

I'm just glad there's another XDCAM owner here. It was beginning to get lonely :)

You have a little more experience that I do Simon. Do you usually use DCC for exterior shots? So far it seems for the F350 that Cine2 gamma curve plus DCC is the best combo to handle exterior shots with wide dynamic range, especially capturing action where you can't control the lighting and don't have much time to set up the shot.

The first two of the motion test clips are now available on http://www.redhawk-development.com/

Go to "Features" and then select "XDCAM Motion Test". We plan to post a few more clips on that page showing different Avid Slo-Mo effects, since this (like the green screen clip) is still mostly a test of how the F350 and Avid work together.

We are also doing some shots that involve a vehicle moving across a complex background with a pan in the opposite direction and such to stress the Codec more realistically. We hope to post 24P and 60i footage for that within a few days.

Some people do not like DCC. However I find it more useful than not. It only comes into effect above the knee point you have defined. In the XDCAM HD cameras there are some things to consider.

The knee point is set to 100 out of the box which is very high. The white clip is also set to 108. Again very high. You will have to adjust this if you want to make legal video without the need to do some post adjustment.

The Cinegamma modes are designed to get more visual dynamic range. At a full open iris with the DCC off you will not hit 100ire because the roll off of the highlights is well before that point. I need to look into it more, but I do not think you will gain much using DCC with the cinegamma modes other than brighter whites. So if you are using the standard setting of 100 for the knee point, the cinegamma modes never get to this point. DCC I think will just make the whites whiter if you have kept the white clip to 108, or have turned it off. I could be wrong though.

In use I actually found STD gamma to work the best overall. I didn't have much trouble even in harsh contrasty sun conditions. It is the same for my 510. I have settings that will lift the blacks and roll off the highlights to obtain an 11.5 stop exposure range if I want, but at the end of the day I have gone back to shooting STD gamma table 3.

The main problem I find with trying to get a lot of exposure range with these cameras isn't because of highlights. None of these settings make a huge difference to them other than the smoothness of the roll off. As long as you keep them under or around the clip point it doesn't really make a huge difference which gamma setting you use. The real problem is the lowlights and mid-tones. And the only way to bring them up is to stretch them. And unfortunately that results in noise, which you will want to eliminate in post by bringing them down again. Kind of defeating the point of lifting them to begin with.

And there is something else too. After shooting with a maximum range setting I find that in post because of problems with banding if I try to extract more from the lowlights or highlights in high contrast situations I merely end up with a picture that looks no different than had I used STD gamma in the first place.

One thing that does confuse me is that looking at a document I have here with the XDCAM HD gamma curve definitions, there is a marked difference between Cine4 and STD gamma. But when I tried them out they looked almost exactly the same. Sony assured me that these gamma curves are designed for maximum range and are based on the same curves that came with the V2 software for the HDW-750. So you may want to experiment more with them.

When the 350 arrives I aim to try and get it tested properly. One drawback to the XDCAM HD cameras is that they don't have a test SAW signal to actually see what is going on with the gamma curves.

Have you tried the camera with the detail switched off? I shot the music video on the 330 this way and it remained pin-sharp. Almost too sharp still!

Thanks Simon. Lots of good ideas.

I am not sure why, but I have found that DCC does make a big difference with Cine2. For example I shot a time-lapse (1 fps) sunset shot due north across a steep valley with a ridge about 3/4 mile away. The sky was cloudy with clouds racing by, so the light was somewhat diffuse. With DCC OFF the trees on the top of the ridge disappeared in the glare (with exposure set for the rest of the image). With DCC ON the details of the trees came back. Not sure how it works, but seems useful.

You are right that the gamma curves do not go above 100. I tried your suggestion and shot a white card with lots of light and checked the waveform monitor. With STD the waveform peaks at 108/100 (DCC off/on, white clip 108). With Cine1 it is 98/84, Cine2 89/78, Cine3 99/90, Cine4 90/93.

I will just have to play around with them a bit more to figure out when to use what.

Your comments about noise are dead on. The camera seems a little noisy at times. We often have to use -3db gain (green screen and such). Frequent black balance helps some. I have the gain switch H/M/L set to -3,0,+3. It is hard to image even using anything above +3 for most of what we do. Perhaps there is something else going on here.

Michael: how would you say the noise level on the F350 compares to the Canon XLH1, and what gain settings are you using on the latter camera?

The DCC works I believe by creating multiple knee points above the specified knee point. I can't remember if the PDW-3xx series has a knee aperture setting, but this could help in keeping detail in the highlights. But it would of course require that the detail circuits are on. As a compromise you could put the Detail frequency up to the max to make any edge enhancement really fine, and try turning on Knee Aperture if there is one (I forgot to save the manual from the CD)

With the white clip turned off you should find that the cinegamma curves shoot up to maximum output with DCC on.

With regards to the noise, yes I also found the camera to be noisier than I would have expected. This was visible with the peaking in the viewfinder too. Adding in even +3db of gain introduced much more noise than the PDW-5xx series (one of the things I like about the PDW-5xx series is that you need to go to +9db gain before the noise becomes anywhere near intrusive). The manual states that the new cameras are rated at 54db SN ratio.

Simon, There is a knee aperture setting, I have not played with it yet. I will try white clip off with cinegamma curves and see what happens.

Kevin, you can get a sense relative noise from the green screen clips we posted (H1 was at 0db, F350 was at -3db). The background matte was clearest on the two XLH1 shots, but there was less edge crawl on the F350 than the XLH1 HDV shot (and even less on the XLH1 HDSDI shot).

Remember to turn the DCC on with the white clip off. That way it should should clip. Turning off the white clip on its own will have no effect unless the gamma curve goes over 100ire.

One curious thing I noticed is that the 3xx cameras do not allow control over the level of the 100% zebras. They stay locked at 100ire.

Michael, how do you find the look of the 350 using STD gamma? I just tried inserting a shot from the SD XDCAM into the music video. Both cameras were using the same type of gamma. What was very apparent (and I thought this when I first played back the XDCAM HD footage without comparison) is that the XDCAM HD has a really nice 'warm' look to it. Very good with skin tones.

The above link to the Chroma Key test does not seem to work completely reliably. You can go to the home page (http://www.redhawk-development.com/) then browse to Features and then Chroma Key Test.

I fixed your link in the earlier post. You had an extra character in there. Link works now. Thanks for all the info on this camera. I have been keenly interested in this thing since it was announced. I have already watched the demo footage on Sony's site. Pretty nice stuff. There is supposedly a 2/3 version of the XDCAM HD forthcoming that will provide true 4:2;2 out the HDSDI port. Of course, the cost will be considerably higher.

I think this is going to be a great ENG cam the way the workflow sets up using optical disk and low res proxies that can be sent back to the station via email or ftp so that editors and script writers can get an early start. The ruggedness of the optical disk should prove to be helpful for news crews that have to put their cameras in harsh conditions to get the story.

regards,

-gb-

Hi Simon, I will try shooting some more stuff with STD. I have been shooting more outdoors/landscape stuff than skin tones so far.

Do you know what settings (knee pont/slope, black gamma, etc) you used with the F330 and the STD gamma curve?

Hi Greg, thanks for fixing the link.

This is definitely a great ENG camera, and a great documentary style camera. Sony has already announced that they will have the 2/3" camera June 2007.

For the purpose of the test, other than switching the detail off I left the camera in its default form with the knee point set to 100, white clip at 108, and black gamma left as it was out of the box.

Mike,

Interesting motion test. The capture to XDCAM disc looked just as good as the HD-SDI clip. I was pleasantly surprised how good it looked. I guess the long GOP scheme has been perfected by Sony, I saw very little blur on the slo mo clips, even on the little peices of the melon. Also let me say that I really appreciate you taking the time to do these tests and give the results and post the clips for all of us to see. I know that takes a lot of time to do, and with your upcoming outdoor fishing schedule I'm sure you are busy. So thanks again, and KEEP THE INFO AND FOOTAGE COMING!

Mike,

Interesting motion test. The capture to XDCAM disc looked just as good as the HD-SDI clip. I was pleasantly surprised how good it looked. I guess the long GOP scheme has been perfected by Sony, I saw very little blur on the slo mo clips, even on the little peices of the melon. Also let me say that I really appreciate you taking the time to do these tests and give the results and post the clips for all of us to see. I know that takes a lot of time to do, and with your upcoming outdoor fishing schedule I'm sure you are busy. So thanks again, and KEEP THE INFO AND FOOTAGE COMING!

Thanks for all the interesting information----I'm about ready to pull the trigger on the camera--I primairly shoot documentary, and I was trying to get a sense of the production flow with the XDCAM HD-------If either you are Simon are editing your own work, I would like to get an idea of what your hardware set ups are and what your work flow is like.

We edit with Avid, we have a two of Express Pro HD Licenses which work on a laptop and two Avid Adrenaline Media Composer HD systems which required the Avid Adrenaline box. Right now we are doing HDSDI capture into the Adrenaline box.

Once Avid provides XDCAM HD support we expect to be able to just move the MXF files (firewire) to a laptop and then import into Express Pro HD, so we don't have to carry an Adrenaline with us all the time. We generally convert everything to Avid's internal form (DNxHD) for editing.

Once in Avid we can do pretty much anything we need to.

I would say the F350 is just about ideal for documentary work. If you have a good monitor for focusing it helps, although the "quick zoom" feature on the Fujinon lens works pretty well (Canon HD lenses have something similar

I'm considering one of the two cameras and a deck for our next purchase, which probably wouldn't be till the end of next year, after they come out with the first upgrade. I did that with the DSR500--Sony had the first minor upgrade within about a year and that's when we got it and some DVCAM decks.

I had no desire to go tapeless, however it seems to me the XDCAM format is about the same thing as shooting on tape, but it allows a better workflow. One thing I like a lot is the proxy file thing, so both editing systems could store proxy files of every original disc. This beats spending half a day scrounging through boxes trying to find the sunset over the river shot I did 4 years ago, etc.

Only problem is from the brochure pdf I downloaded, the software is not Mac-compatible. That would eliminate the whole idea of XDCAM for us. However, I've also heard a rumor about something between Sony and Apple at NAB, presumably it would involve compatibility, but who knows. If they get that worked out and its backwards compatible to our new dual 2.7 gig G5s, then we might be able to move to XDCAM HD soon.

Thanks for the info---I'm running down to Abel Cine next week to take a look--I'm interested to look at some 2/3" lenses on the camera---They haven't set that up yet but I will report back when I see them in action.

At the Texas HD Shootout last night we did have time to put a 2/3" Fujinon HA18x7.6BERM lens on with adaptor. I was suprised at how good it looked. Fujinon had warned me that we might lose a bit of resolution and sensitivity with a 2/3" lens and adaptor. We did not really see any of that. It looked as good as the 1/2" Fujinon lens. Adam Wilt made some comments about the artifacts indicating that we were getting more high frequency information from the 2/3" lens, which sounded like a good thing. I am sure Adam will explain it all in his write-up.