Very first impressions of my PMW-350

[Cris Daniels]

Well I appreciate the response for certain. I am not hooked on RED, or the PL Lenses by any means. I would like to get at least one nice wide prime for the 350 as I previously mentioned. I must have something wider than the stock lens. On the long end I think I can live with the stock lens for now.

I really like the Nanoflash, I would not really consider the camera without one. The big thing for me is the fact that I know I can really rip with that camera. I know the EX1 so well it is like second nature. I feel better that the PMW 350 would also be that kind of camera that I could master and at that point it is just a high quality tool, not some constant technical challenge. As much as I can appreciate the frequent RED updates and bug fixes, you can't help but thinking that in some way you are a beta tester. Not interested.

My experiences with the EX1 and EX3 are so good that I really feel like the PMW350 is exactly what I have been looking for. I am in Florida for a while so I will see about getting my hands on a PMW350 to see what it feels like.

[Greg Chisholm]

Originally Posted by Paul Cronin

I just received the camera today and started going through the manual in detail which I will finish tomorrow.

The camera body is very light weight. I will put it and the lens on a scale along with my full set up. Lens seems like it is built well with smooth controls.

Installed the small shotgun mic that comes with it since I do not have a XLR 3 pin to 5 pin cable for my Rode NTG-3. The audio plug up front is 5 pin XLR the two on the back are 3 pin XLR.

I have my Marshall V-LCD70P=3GSDI hooked up for ease of menu viewing and to correct with camera bars.

All the switches and button seem well though out.

I only turned the camera on for 10 min and wow the latitude compared to my EX1 seems huge with a sharp picture on factory presets. And I have not even set up the Nano.

Done for the day but I will do a detail review in my blog over the next few weeks and be posting here often about my findings.

First day impressions: Good Move Paul

paul, i was wondering if the viewfinder on the 350 is adjustable like the one on the ex3... can it be moved to the left for left eye shooting or is it permanently fixed?

[Paul Cronin]

Cris I know the EX350 is hard to find at this time. I was told Abel has put a few in rental so when you are back you should check it out. Don't know if anyone in FL who has one in stock.

Agree I will also be buying a prime for some wide shooting but will take my own advice a rent a few first.

Hope it is warm there lots of winter going on in RI. Look forward to a shoot in the Keys in a couple of weeks.

[Paul Cronin]

Yes Greg is moves left and right, forward and backwards and is very adjustable. Quick lever for fore and aft and locking wheel for side to side.

Here is top view where you can see the rails for forward/backwards and the channel for side to side. Sorry if it is a little out of focus I was focusing on the cold shoe.

[Greg Chisholm]

thanks for the speedy response and the photo.

greg

[Tom Roper]

The test was performed by me with the kit lens at F4.8 from 2 meters, zoomed almost full wide, but not quite. Imatest normalizes the sharpening to a standard 2 pixel radius, so the influence of in-cam sharpening has no bearing on the result.

For 1080/23.98p:
Horizontal 1000 lines
Vertical 1000 lines

Updated 1/08/2010

[Alister Chapman]

Wow, those figures are impressive...... I think.... and to some extent was what I found as when I shot with the demo unit I did wind the detail back a fair bit. I think this is one camera where the default detail and crispening settings really are too high. At least with the crispening control you can back of the high frequency response. It also shows what many have doubted.. that it really is possible to make a high resolution HD lens for not a lot of money.

[Steve Phillipps]

Originally Posted by David Heath

Glints - I'm used to a DSR500, which takes about 5-6 seconds from "off" to record ready, a long time in some doorstep type situations, especially long waits when leaving the camera on is impractical for battery life.

If you use cache/loop record it'll capture the image more or less as soon as you turn it on. Had this with the Varicam too, the P2 cards take ages to register when you turn it on, but with loop record you're rolling in under a second. Problem with the Varicam is that you can't use loop record in variable frame rate mode! How useful is that!
Steve

[Paul Cronin]

I have shot with the camera now for two weeks and indeed you have a sharp picture with amazing quality. Some of the sharpest footage I have viewed. I am using Alister's preset #2, which cuts down the sharpness a bit, but I also tried factory presets.

Today finally my tripod system shows up so I can now go into the field. Next week we take the camera in the helicopter for its first shoot. Then the following week the camera is working on a shoot in the Keys. So I will have a lot of footage to start the second part of my review, once I have sent the footage of to the clients of course. You can read the first part of my review (First Impressions on my blog). On all shoots I will be using the Nano Flash at different settings.

I have been working with Olof Ekbergh from Westside AV Studio on a Nano plate for the PMW-350 (EX350). I built a mock up in cardboard did some measurements so Olof could put together a plate that holds the Nano, wireless receivers, and other options off the back of the camera. The plate uses the four threaded holes behind the wireless slot. This arrives today so I will post comments and pictures in the Convergent Design forum later today.

[Tom Roper]

I goofed, sorry. I reran the Imatest, after realizing I had clipped the exposure, skewing the result. The actual resolution for 1080/23.98p is around 1000 lines both horizontal and vertical. Have made corrections to the earlier post.

Imatest was a big help in deriving appropriate sharpness settings. You can set the desired sharpening radius in pixels, and then it will tell you by percent the amount you are over or under in both horizontal and vertical directions.

I found the PMW350K at the default settings has too much sharpness overall, and substantially more sharpness applied in the horizontal than the vertical. Fortunately, the PMW350K settings let you correct for that. By changing the horizontal/vertical ratio, you can match the sharpness in both directions, which is what I did.

I set my sharpness to a standard 2 pixel radius, and was within 1 percent of that in both horizontal and vertical directions with the following detail settings:

Level -10
HV Ratio +35
Freq +25
White Limit +25
Black Limit +25

Already, the picture image looks very smooth.

[Piotr Wozniacki]

Tom,

I bet with you previous message you have made a couple of people place their orders!

[Paul Cronin]

Interesting Tom,

What I have been running:

Level -15
HV Ratio (default which is 0)
Freq +24
White Limit (Default 0)
Black Limit (Default 0)

I will give you setting a try.

Also have you noticed that if you save a Paint setting each time you shut down it reverts back to Standard not the setting you shut down on like the EX1/3? I guess you could change this by saving the setting as Standard but this does not make sense if you use three different settings.

[Tom Roper]

Paul, the paint settings stick when I power down, but overall I am confused by all these file saving conventions. Earlier I saved the All file to sxs, then paint, reference, presets, and somehow managed to lose the paint settings in that series of actions. I like the old way better. Also miss the shot transition mode and image stabilization, love everything else.

Piotr, I hope I didn't, I do have a conscience about that and am very sorry for that mistake. I likely did the same thing with the EX1 so I intend to retest it as well.

But overall, it's not sharpness or resolution that jumps out at me, as it is the low noise, cleanliness and shadow detail. I'm still recovering from cancer treatments, can barely lift it, but that's coming back.

[Paul Cronin]

Tom sorry to hear you have had to deal with treatment. I hope you come back strong and have family close by.

My paint settings stay in the menu but it reverts back to the Standard setting on each shut down. Then I go and pick which setting I like. Would prefer it to stay on the last setting I left on shut down. I hope this is not a bug with my camera if we are both saying the same thing.

[Tom Roper]

Originally Posted by Paul Cronin

What I have been running:

Level -15
HV Ratio (default which is 0)
Freq +24
White Limit (Default 0)
Black Limit (Default 0)

We're not talking a big difference here, except the HV setting let's you not have to pull down the level setting quite as far, afterall when we reduce the level we may be undersharpening the good channel by as much as we were oversharpened in the bad channel. And this probably should be tested separately for 60i, as I only worked that setting out for 24p.