VJ Broadcast camera on the cheap?

[Alfred Okocha]

Hello!

I need to buy a camera with the following requirements.

1. Broadcast quality.
2. A BNC out to be able to connect a AVIWEST or similar product to go LIVE.
3. XLRs
4. Cheap...

The camera will mainly be used in talking heads, interview situations.

I used to have a SONY DSR 300 way back and then went to work with the EX3. Since then a lot of the work I do went DSLR and to tell you the truth I haven't really kept up with all the cameras that have been released.

It seems that perhaps the PMW 100 could do the trick but it also seems it's going obsolete really fast? And is it a real pain not having a "proper" sized camera? Is there any other camera that you would recommend instead?

(I'm no fan of touch screens so if possible I'd stay away from those...)

Thank you very much, any input is most welcome!

[Alfred Okocha]

Don't know if it's relevant but I'd pair it up with a Sennheiser ew 135-p G3 Camera Mount Wireless Microphone System and a Sachtler Ace M Fluid Head with 2-Stage Aluminum Tripod & Mid-Level Spreader.

If anybody has a tip of some good on camera light I'd appreciate it too.

Thanks.

[Robert Young]

Take a look at this- to be released any day now:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1072752-REG/sony_pxw_x70_professional_xdcam_compact.html

[Alfred Okocha]

Thank you Robert!

Yes, that does look like an interesting camera! It's a plus that I could work straight with the cheaper SD cards and it has the necessary SDI out.

I get a bit confused since I grew up with the metric system... Single 1/2.9" Exmor CMOS sensor is bigger or smaller (from the PMW 100) than the The 1" type sensor from this camera?

At a first glance I can't really see why x70 would be a worse choice (well since it's cheaper, I mean... you generally have to trade something.)

Do you know if it will shoot both PAL and NTSC?

Thanks again for your input!

[Robert Young]

A 1" sensor is maybe 8 times bigger than a 1/2.9"
For lots more info on the X70 go to this thread:
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/digital-...ion-ax100.html

[Alfred Okocha]

Thank you, I will check it out.

[Paul Anderegg]

I would shy away from the X70. I am a full time shooter for an ABC affiliate, and bought a Sony CX900 (same damn thing, no handle or SDI) to use for minor freelance work. It is also my carry camera to and from work, and I shoot stories with it several times a month. It has plenty of manual controls, but when I shot a high speed pursuit with a stand-off earlier this month, the controls, especially the retarded focus, made the whole ting a mess. Auto focus is useless, all preset white balance settings are way way way off, and the peaking and zebra paint the screen with so much solid white thick lines that it is impossible to manual focus or judge exposure. If you have plenty of time to adjust a shot, it's an amazing looking package, but you'll be kicking yourself if you only get 5 seconds between your shots to set the controls.


I put a few videos up on YouTube of how it looks shooting news scenes, day and night video on tripod.

Paul

[Alfred Okocha]

Thanks Paul!

Good input. Yes, I'm not a big fan of "auto" anything so I am a bit worried about going down so much in size that you'll have to trust the camera to do the work for you.
Even though you plan and think that you won't be pressed for time there will always be situations that require speed...

Have you come across any other camera that would fit the bill better?

[Paul Anderegg]

Alfred, I am going to go back a little on my recommendations. I got a chance to shoot a film festival with the CX900, and the darn thing looked soooo good, that I want to upgrade to the X70.

In a non breaking news nighttime environment, the cameras manual controls worked well enough to get the job done. Zooming in to focus was an issue, thanks to the very slow zoom, but I found using my third hand to press the focus magnifier was not as hard as I thought it would be. Things I wanted and needed for my shoot were 720p60, more storable push to white balance settings to recall, and line/mic switching.

Things I liked about the CX900 but now find useless were the 720p function, which is a retarded "proxy" 720p30 3Mpbs clip system which only works while recording XAVC S 19080p30. The Sony Play Memories software is supposed to stitch together these small 720 clips without rerendering, so I wanted to speed-upload them for distribution instead of waiting an hour to export out of FCPX and convert in Compressor. Well, this didn't work, as the Mac version of PM won't take the files, and the PC version in my backup laptop stitched them together with a drift in audio that was about half a second 30 minutes into the new merged clip.

I will include a fairly large download file of the RAW camera clips stitched together so you can see how the original files look........celebrities always look good on camera. It's XAVC S 1080 30p, about 1.45GB large.

http://1drv.ms/1pz9ewD

Paul

[Robert Young]

Wow... that is nice looking footage.
Impressive interior/low light shots.
My X70 should arrive later this week.
I'll be interested to see if there is a discernible difference between XAVC S and the X70 pro level XAVC codec.

[Paul Anderegg]

So am I. 50Mbps ungraded 8 bit 4:2:0 vs 50Mbps ungraded 10 bit 4:2:2.......my unedjumicated mind would tend to think all that extra "behind the scenes" data would take away from the raw picture detail that I am after. Mine arrives tomorrow, very excited.......just found out it has a much higher resolution flip out LCD panel.

You on Coronado island in San Diego? Not really an island anymore if it is that one. :-)

Paul

[Paul Anderegg]

And re that RAW file link I posted above, don't forget to click the DOWNLOAD button in the upper left of the screen, or else you will be viewing a very low quality stream version of the RAW footage.

Paul

[Robert Young]

Originally Posted by Paul Anderegg

You on Coronado island in San Diego? Not really an island anymore if it is that one. :-)

That's the one...

[Paul Anderegg]

Oh cool, watch 10News and you will see me shooting my live shots with my new X70.....heh.. :-)

Paul

[Robert Young]

I'll be watching