Black levels jumping on EX-1
 

I had an odd experience yesterday with my EX-1. Wondering if anyone has had a similar experience or knows what button I accidently pushed ( hope its op error but I've owned this cam for years.). I fear its a camera problem and will try to replicate it again today.

When setting up an interview against black B/G in the morning I noticed my blacks in the waveform were elevated up around 5 . I played with various settings and capped the camera (I think I capped it ) but they didn't go down. At some point in fumbling around they suddenly dropped down to 0. (BTW - My PP setting is std Gamma 3 and Black at -6 .) Don't know what I did to drop it down though. I was shooting in PP3

Later, after lunch and powering down the camera we shot more - all being fine then switched to playback mode to check a shot and when I returned to camera mode the blacks were up at 5 again. I played around with everything I could find to no avail - then switched to another PP2 (which was very similar setup) and the blacks popped backdown to 0 again. Switched it back to PP3 and they stayed correct. Finish shooting and they never popped back up again.

Scary problem. If I didn't have a monitor I wouldn't have seen it. I'm not sure it was only the blacks changing though that's what I noticed most.
Its possible I hit the "all auto" button but I don't think that would change the blacks would it? Also i tried hitting that when it was elevated and didn't help.

Any ideas?

I am not sure about this, but it sounds like that particular PP is corrupt.

I would recreate it on another of the six available. And use that for a while. Check if it works all the time.

It is a computer and we all know computer files sometimes get corrupt.

I seem to remember there is a reset to factory defaults in the menus, I would try this too. Don't forget to write down your PP settings. I would not back them up to a card and then reinstall them as they may still be corrupt.

If this keeps happening I would contact Sony. I have talked with Sony Repair center in NJ a few times and they are very helpful.

Good luck let us know what happens. I have personally never had this happen on either of my EXcams.

Are you using the composite out to feed the waveform monitor? If so make sure your termination is correct.

Oddly the problem has apparently disappeared . I did an all-reset twice. After the first one it was definitely still happening but somewhere along the line it stopped. I really can't say exactly what fixed it. May have been the all reset .
I did contact Sony repair and had an email exchange with a tech I've dealt with before. He had no idea at all.

There's no question it was a genuine problem though why its gone I can't say. My guess is Olof was onto something when he talked about it being a corrupted PP file though it wasn't just one PP. Anyway that's all I can say about it. Weird