SONY PMW-EX1 XD CAM

A personal review Derek Yeo Aka VideoCobra

Well, I have finally got hold of my very own PMW-EX1 and hopefully I will be able to succeed in giving you and honest opinion of this revolutionary camera. I am sure that many have already read countless articles as well as reviews on the EX1 over the internet therefore I am not going to focus on that but to share the personal little discoveries and opinions I have on this cam.

Hand Held Shooting & Design

Trust me on this! The PMW-EX1 is a cam seriously meant for the tripod in my honest opinion. It’s a camera most awkward to hold in your hands and also possesses very bad ergonomics. (The applied science of equipment design, as for the workplace, intended to maximize productivity by reducing operator fatigue and discomfort.)

I cannot begin to emphasize how seriously discomforting it is in shooting handheld with this camera and perhaps I would give it and Oscar as the worst handheld camcorder in history. There is just something so wrong with it, either it’s a little too short, the handle wedge to much backwards perhaps, grip handle too big and also the contributing factor of the heavy Fujinon lens weighing the cam forward heavy. And Oh! If you think the rotating handle will solve that problem, the answer is NO! It actually makes it even more difficult to find a middle ground.

I would like to further add that you cannot possibly shoot this cam one handed but which is one thing I can do easily still with the V1, Z1, XH-A1, PD170 etc… Well, of course, I am not saying that I do that but for a matter of comparison in a run & gun situation when I have to keep the camera rolling and move a chair or something…Well…I am sure you will get what I mean…

Remedy

My remedy for this would be to attached a shoulder brace to the EX1 and turn it into a shoulder mount or if you must insist to shoot it as it is, perhaps a SONY U60 battery will help a little in easing out the lop sided weight distribution, or lastly, shoot it on a tripod all the time.

Battery Life

Well on the subject of the batteries….. Interesting enough, I assume with all the wonderful ‘third parties’ popping up over the shelves for less than a S$100/- a pop for the NP-F970s Sony decided it was best they changed the batteries for the EX1 completely, which of cos gave birth to the U series batteries. Well, are they any good? Hmmm…not really…What comes with the standard package is a U-30 and a fully charged will only get you 1 ½ times recording of my two 8gb S x S cards ( without even the LCD flipped open) and ready to make the switch to a fresh battery if you don’t want to lose vital coverage.

However, what I found most interesting and intelligent is the Battery Info via the menu which gave you a very detailed information about the battery you have in the compartment.  

Example of information : Battery Type, Charge Count, Manufacture Date, Capacity, Voltage and remaining time in Percentage. It also has a battery alarm where you are able to set an alarm warning you at which percentage level. I fully recommend you have a couple of U-60 batteries in hand and a generous amount of $$$ put away to acquire them as they cost like over S$430/- a pop.

Boot Up Time

When you turn the cam on it takes about 6 seconds for the cam to boot up before you can actually begin shooting. I guess this may posed as problem in wedding shoots but no so much if you are planning to acquire this cam for producing a short film etc. At the end, I guess essentially, it depends what is your purpose of buying the EX1 for. As in weddings, I will never recommend the EX1 as the ideal cam anyway…

Price Factor & Formats

For a camera that resolves a true full 1920x1080 image; shoots both interlaced and progressive; records 1920x1080, 1440x1080 (HDV-compatible), and 1280x720 formats; and offers variable frame rates from 1 fps to 30 fps (1080p) 1fps to 60 fps (720p) The camera records using long-GOP MPEG-2 on dual S x S solid-state memory cards, and provides an SDI output with embedded audio and time code. Do however be very careful as I can almost assure you that you will lose the rubber piece that protects the SDI BNC socket, so, you might as well leave it home and replace it with a BNC terminator. Though the latter does not record SD or have any down convert feature it however does have an IEEE1394 output that allows you to output via fire wire but only up to HDV resolution and not the full HD. Imagine Cine Alta quality in sub 10K price category. Unbelievable!

Picture Profiles

The EX1 does have the ability to perform comprehensive image tweaks using its built in controls though I must warn you they do not come with presets as default. It seems that SONY has left that part to you to experiment with. I managed to find a few use settings online and tweak them as instructed and must admit I am pretty pleased with the results of the capabilities of these settings which can greatly improve your final results.

LCD & EVF

Focus is relatively accurate and easy with the EX1’s LCD screen and I must admit it is pretty pin sharp and as good as the Z1 or not probably better. So, in this area it has clearly trounced cams like the Canon XH-A1 and XH- G1. As for the EVF of the EX1 I must admit I am pretty disappointed and this I say making a very fair comparison even to the Z1’s EVF. It is just very tricky to focus with the EVF so I have set mine permanently black and white that helps a little.

Green Haunting Phenomenon.

1)                 What I like to term as the haunting is when you set the camcorder to any of the progressive modes a strange phenomenon will occur. Again I stress, this is only on progressive modes. What will happen is that every time you activate the expanded the focus the screen will flicker green for a few seconds and then turn stable. This is normal and does not affect the recorded footage.

2)                 This may also happen when you flip the LCD screen out after the camera has been booted up.

3)              Also look out when you change formats the screen will also momentarily flicker green and tell you the incredible hulk is showing soon.

All the above is normal …nothing to worry just more of an irritant!

Infra Red Receiver

For some strange reason again the engineers in Sony decided it wasn’t necessary to have a IR receptor at the back of the camera and I have been stressing that the EX1 is so much a tripod cam in every sense the IR receptor would have been helpful. ???? They have it on the FX1, Z1, V1 but then the EX1….MIA!! What up Sony?

Focus Ring

The wonderful focus ring allows you to snap forward where you are able to still manually focus nad override auto focus. When you snap this backwards, it turns to full manual and the auto focus is disabled. On either mode, if you were to press the lens info button a focus bar will also pop up allowing you to check your distance to the subject of focus. This button also allows you to toggle between feet and meters based on your preference.

I find this especially useful when executing DOF shots as the indicator provides you some sort of guide.

Access to the USB, Component etc..

Yes, yet another design flaw I see…a soft plastic to get to the connections to plug your USB, component and composite. OH! And even harder to snap back on after you are done…I wonder?? I mean they did such a great job with the V1P and also the A1P putting the connections behind easy effective snap open hard plastic doors but for the EX1 they decided it was ok for you to fiddle like hell to get your cables connected...or is this Sony’s ploy in saying to you ..Buy my S X S card reader!

Editing

Good news I throw the .mts files (AVCHD ) on the Sony Vegas timeline and it struggles like crazy and frames begin to drop as I playback. I throw the MXF files on Sony Vegas and they play without a problem. So the good news is that Sony Vegas handles the MXF files as well as they handle the M2t files…. YEAH!!!! ( Quad Core System 7950 GX2 Nvidia 1GB 4GB Hyperx 1033 4GB