It has arrived!

[Ola Christoffersson]

Just spoke to a friend who has was holding his EX1 in his hand as we spoke. It had arrived at the suppliers today and he could not wait for the delivery so he took his car and went down and picked it up tonight.

My guess is that we will see a handful of happy campers in the EU getting their cameras in the next couple of days.

[Jim Exton]

Awesome! Time for a footage section, I can't wait to see images from different users.

[Per-Axel Gjores]

As Ola already has pointed out in the first post, I - or rather the University of Kalmar in Sweden - have taken delivery of what seems to be one of the first EX1s in the world....?! What he didn't mention was that is not one but two EX1s....!

http://www.bolanski.com/ex1.php

Yes, we're quite excited and happy...

[Chris Hurd]

Excellent... congratulations Per-Axel on the arrival of your twins! That's a great photo.

I am happy to make server space and bandwidth available for you (and anybody else) to host EX1 video. Just send an email to me (chris at dvinfo dot net) and I'll set you up.

[Eric Pascarelli]

Per-Axel,

You are a star both behind and in front of the camera(s).

[Ray Bell]

Hey that black one looks like it could be mine.... :-)


lets see some footage.... outside, in the daylight...

[Calvin Dean]

Originally Posted by Ray Bell

lets see some footage.... outside, in the daylight...

Yeah, let's see some footage:
1. Outdoor fast motion/sports
2. Indoor low light
3. Rich colors
4. Slo-mo (overcranking)

[Robert Batta]

5. depth of field test ;)

[Paul Joy]

Mine just turned up too :)

Just as it's getting dark so it's bit late for outside footage but I'll certainly try and grab some for you all tomorrow.

Initial impressions:

I won't bother going through everything unless something strikes me as being different than I expected after reading the various reviews, and I was expecting a lot!

> There are rubber protectors over the various connectors on the camera. This was something I mentioned in another thread that I was a little concerned about but Sony have come through and included rubber covers on the i-Link and headphone sockets as well as the SDI connector on the back.

> As in my XH-A1 the microphone holder is too large to hold my Sen 416, I'll need to source an adapter. I had hoped that Sony might include one with the camera as others have mentioned having a rubber adapter included with Z1's but there is no such adapter with the EX1.

> I'm finding the camera a little awkward to grip at the moment, the strap is a lot lower down on the grip than in my canon and as a result I find the camera is tipping to the left, this is probably just something I need to get adjusted correctly / get used too.

That's it really, at least so far until the battery charges and I can switch it on.

regards

Paul.

[Paul Joy]

Okay, the batteries charged and after playing around with the camera I'd like to add the following thoughts...

> The zoom ring on the lens feels a little bit wobbly to me, I expected it to feel quite solid, but then I've never tried a proper video camera lens before either. There seems to be quite a lot of play in it as in it's easy to wobble the screw in post with a clicky feel and it turns really easily. There's a lot less resistance than the zoom controller ring on my XH-A1.

> Another one about zoom. After my XH-A1 I find it a little strange that I can't use both the zoom controller on the grip and the zoom ring on the lens when I feel like it. When the zoom is set to 'servo' the ring is locked, and when it's set to manual the grip controls are disabled. Is this normal for pro lenses?

> There is a lot of strange green flickering going on when changing modes or going between camera / media. This doesn't appear in recorded video, but all the same it's a little off putting and gives the feeling that something is wrong. I'll be interested to hear if everyone see's the same thing.

> Peaking. As far as I can tell, this doesn't function at all well. I can't even tell if it's turned on or off. Maybe I need to learn something to get it set up properly but when I turn on peaking on the A1 it makes it much easier to focus, on the EX1 it doesn't help at all at the moment.

[edit] This was confusion on my part. Peaking does work, but it works very differently to the XH-A1 which I why I missed it. On the A1 peaking enables a kind of sharpening effect over the entire image making i easier to focus. On the sony any hard edged, high contrast images glow when in focus. It's easier to see if you change the colour of the peaking to red. It doesn't seem to function that well on softer subjects though such as faces etc.[/edit]

> White balance. I found it quite strange that doing a manual white balance doesn't store the setting after switching the camera off. Again this may be a setting somewhere but I'm surprised that the default is not to remember a balance setting after selecting preset a or b.

[edit] this was user error, the camera does remember wb settings if set correctly. Preset B is by default set to AWB. After changing it to MEM you can use it to store manual wb settings. [/edit]

> viewfinder. The viewfinder seems very low quality after using the LCD, I can't imagine anyone using it over the LCD unless brightness is a factor.

> Quick / slow. Trying to use this I saw the rolling bars as in the clip which was available online, I think it's a shutter issue as selecting various shutter speeds did have an effect. This was not under flourescents though so it is nothing to do with that.

Next task will be to capture some footage, I'll report back on that later.

Paul.

[Piotr Wozniacki]

Doesn't sound too good, Paul; not at all encouraging - especially the rolling bars effect, and the instability while changing modes!

As far as the peaking is concerned, did you try to change its intensity? You cannot do it on the XH-A1, so I thought you were not aware of this :).

However, don't worry at all - you have Prime Support, don't you? The most striking flaws you're describing cannot possibly be inherent, and hence must be fixable. A memento for all those tempted to import cheaper from outside EU...

[Jason Bodnar]

No these issues do not sound good...Hopefully we will here others impressions so far as well to compare and see if there is a trend.

[Paul Joy]

Originally Posted by Piotr Wozniacki

Doesn't sound too good, Paul; not at all encouraging - especially the rolling bars effect, and the instability while changing modes!

It's not all bad, you all know the good points about the camera already so I only listed the things that effected my use.

The white balancing issue was definitely user error, so ignore that.

I haven't read the manual fully yet and am only going from my experience with the Canon - I'm sure Sony has different ways of doing things and I need to learn the camera.

I'm looking forward to seeing the footage but I have a deadline and need to work tonight so it'll have to wait till tomorrow unfortunately.

[Craig Seeman]

Paul, I did get to play with a preproduction model. Some of the issues I believe are "user" related. I bumped into a few of them too and the Sony rep clarified how the functions work.

I believe there's another switch for the zoom. It was near the underside if I remember correctly.

I think the white balance saving involves doing the steps in a proper sequence. It may be white balance and the hit the button to assign it (or was it the other way around). I remember getting that wrong too.

The green flashes do sound odd. I wonder if you're seeing this regarding specific settings that might be causing some sort of "internal reboot" such as changing frame rates.

I used peaking and thought it was major flexible. It worked fine for me and I was even able to change the color of the peak. The expanded view seems easier to manage though.

[Paul Joy]

Feeling like I'm being overly negative I want to post some good points I've noticed too.

> Menu changes. There's a really useful method for changing various settings on this camera. Even though settings like shutter speed may be buried in the menu's, all these settings apear around the LCD display and you can change them by cycling around the LCD with the SEL/SET controller and change the settings right there without going in to the menu's.

This might be common on other Sony's but after the canon I found it incredibly useful.

> LCD quality. This has all been said but the LCD is beautiful, sitting in my editing room with a single light the LCD is showing an image that looks gorgeous, the colours all look correct and the low light imaging on the camera seems way better than the XH-A1.

> DOF. After the Xh-A1 there is a very noticeable difference in DOF, I'll try and get some examples of this over the next few days.

> Build quality. The camera feels a lot more solid than my Canon, it is weighty and just feels like a pro piece of kit. I was never really happy with the construction of the XH-A1, this camera definately delivers in that department. The Zoom rocker alone tells this story, it's huge and solid, not like the creaky one on the A1.

Paul