Field monitor for Sony PMW-EX1?

[George Kroonder]

Hi Piotr,

Last I heard was that Luis was shipping small batches and working on US retail distribution. I don't think he currently has an international partner.

Phil Bloom was talking about getting one at some point, but don't know if that happened.

Warranty may be a problem internationally as well.

George/

[Paul Cronin]

Will the HD SDI allow peaking and Zebra?

[Mark Britton]

Originally Posted by Paul Cronin

Will the HD SDI allow peaking and Zebra?

Negative. No peaking, zebra, histogram. Far as I'm aware, none of that gets fed out of any video output. Least my EX1 won't do it.

[James Huenergardt]

I've heard great things about the Carrion monitor and saw one at DV Expo last year.

Getting in touch with Luis is another story.

I've heard back from him once. Weeks after I emailed, and my questions on battery adapters still isn't answered.

However, he does make a great product from what I've heard. And what I saw was a great monitor. A little bulky, but very nice.

Hopefully you'll have an easier time getting in touch with him than I've had.

Jim

[Matt Davis]

Originally Posted by Spencer Dickson

I assumed that it would cost upwards of $5000 for a "decent" monitor. Can hd cf be achieved easily on an 8.5 inch screen?

Check out one of these:

http://www.teletest.net/producttype.asp?id=3

Because they're from the UK, may make it a bit pricey for US folk. All monitors do PAL/NTSC.

But the SDI and HD-SDI inputs are cool, as is the fact you can run the monitor from Sony 970 batteries left over from your old PD150 or Z1.

And wireless options abound.

[Gints Klimanis]

Originally Posted by Mark Britton

Negative. No peaking, zebra, histogram. Far as I'm aware, none of that gets fed out of any video output. Least my EX1 won't do it.

I confirm that such info is not on the composite and component outputs. I wonder why Sony would choose to avoid adding that display information while sending other overlay information.

[Piotr Wozniacki]

Originally Posted by Gints Klimanis

I confirm that such info is not on the composite and component outputs. I wonder why Sony would choose to avoid adding that display information while sending other overlay information.

Because how peaking works, depends very much on the screen resolution (or rather its "mapping" to the actual signal resolution) - not viable to have a single peaking signal type work with all kinds of external monitoring. It's not even sent to the EX1's own monitor while in magnified mode.

[David Tamés]

Originally Posted by Jaron Berman

[...] The flip-out screen on that camera is breathtaking. It's really a giant leap forward in small LCD's - very high res, very nice color, and it's transflexive - you can see a bright picture even in full sunlight [...]

Jaron is oh so right. I have to join the chorus. The PMW-EX1 is the first camcorder I've used with a flip-out LCD that I can shooting confidently using the LCD for focus. The JVC H100 came close, it had an excellent peaking feature, but was too hard to see in sunlight and very low res. The peaking that Jaron mentioned works quite well. The LCD also shows you the feet (or meter) reading and depth of field. All in all, the flip-out LCD on the PMW-EX1 really sets a new standard. Not that having a nice, crisp, high-density HD LCD would not be a nice thing to have, but with the EX1, one can really work untethered to a monitor. And all this praise for a Sony camera is coming from a Panasonic fan.

[Gints Klimanis]

Originally Posted by Piotr Wozniacki

Because how peaking works, depends very much on the screen resolution (or rather its "mapping" to the actual signal resolution) - not viable to have a single peaking signal type work with all kinds of external monitoring. It's not even sent to the EX1's own monitor while in magnified mode.

There are only a few types of monitor output modes supported by the Sony EX1, and peaking code can be written for each monitor by changing a pair of dimension variables. Is there a reason a histogram can't be passed to the monitor?


Peaking is a little weird as it is dependent on the signal level, so I'd rather see a general purpose high pass filter to show edges along with a normalization option. There are so many better ways to monitor focus and levels, and zebra stripes and peaking are monitor changes from ten years ago.

[David McGuire]

Ive been called to do a shoot and the "DP" wants to look at the shots. Normally I shoot wildlife. I saw this post. I cant find the DVD player but found the Sony DVP-FX820/L with compoiste in out. Do you know if this will work to show an image? Does the camera need to be set to out put the signal?

thanks!

Originally Posted by Gints Klimanis

Unfortunately, peaking and zebra information is not sent to the component output. This is a major oversight, but something we would appreciate in a firmware upgrade. I'd also like to see this information on the composite output as well.

For an external monitor, I've followed the low-budget crowd by using the Sony FX20 portable DVD player driven by a composite video input. I've also use my Sony Bravia 52" LCD TV.

[Boyd Ostroff]

Not sure what your expectations or budget are, but I wrote about what I'm using here. It is substantially better than a DVD player yet still very inexpensive: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/sdtv-hdtv...etty-good.html

[Paul Cronin]

Has anyone tried the Panasonic BTLH 80WU field monitor?

[Boyd Ostroff]

I remember looking at that monitor when it was introduced at NAB a couple years ago and was very impressed. They had it in a display with their larger monitors and it compared very favorably. In fact, I was really surprised when I saw the specs which said it was only 800x450. I guess they have a really nice scaler.

[Paul Cronin]

Hi Boyd,

Interesting that is has a function similar to the Sony EX peaking. I wonder if this works with HDSDI or just the Panasonic camera plug. Talking to Abel Cin today and will post what I find out.