xdhdcam

[MZolomij]

Hello all,

 

Any thoughts on the Sony XDHDcam? Has anyone used it?

 

Thanks for any input.

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[Adrian Sierkowski]

All I've seen is the Demo-Reel for it from Sony, but that looks pretty good. I'm alittle curious myself about the whole "aquisition system" myself.

[Michael Nash]

I had a look at the system at HD Expo about two months ago. It looks "good," but it's not designed to be all things to all people. It's got a 1/2" sensor which presently limits your lens choices, and it uses a long-GOP type compression similar to HDV, although the bit rates are variable between 18, 25, and 35.

 

As a camera it appears to perform well and look good, but it falls deliberately short of the F-900. I mentioned in another post that Sony has positioned this item technologically and economically between the HDV and HDCAM systems.

[Roderick A. Santiano]

I just wrapped a 7 day shoot today with the F350. I'd have to say I was VERY pleased with it's performance and image quality. The project was an episode of a children's musical series on DVD. The style of shooting is completely narrative but the sets and subject matter are very much like a stage production. If you've seen or heard about the recent production of ONCE UPON A MATTRESS, it's very much in the same genre. Considering it's straight-to-DVD, I was extremely impressed with the images I was able to get without any filtration. I set the gain to -3db and used the CINE3 gamma setting. Video noise was virtually untraceable and compared to the Varicam, I'd shoot on this camera without a second thought. This is the 7th episode we've shot in the series (all previous episodes were shot on the Varicam) and I had a number of comments from the crew about the great images we were getting on this one.

 

The camera was extremely easy to use, once you got used to the slightly different layout of menu settings and buttons. I wouldn't use this camera for blow up to film as the compression is probably too high for that purpose, but for projects most likely limited to television, this camera is pretty impressive and I'm glad to have used it on this project. Once Apple and Sony finally get their plug in to import the 35Mbs footage ready, we'll be able to edit this thing. Kind of a leap of faith shooting on a format that isn't supported yet by FCP, but we're sure it will work out well.

 

Highly recommended for smaller budget productions that demand the highest quality available for this price range.

[Danny Lachman]

I would say from what I saw of Sony's demo reel, that the XD cam was pretty ugly. Sharp footage, but similar to that of a workout video.

 

Could anyone point out some good footage from the XD cam? I noticed on sony's site that they are putting the XD with the Cine Alta's... but it kind of confuses me because of the ugly demo footage I saw.

[Danny Lachman]

Here is the link about the XD with the CineAlta:

 

http://bssc.sel.sony.com/BroadcastandBusin...ews_xdcam.shtml

Edited May 21, 2006 by Danny Lachman

[Michael Nash]

I would say from what I saw of Sony's demo reel, that the XD cam was pretty ugly. Sharp footage, but similar to that of a workout video.

 

A lot of that is just the footage they chose and the way it was lit and shot.

 

All the XDCAM demo stuff I've seen (both SD and HD) seems like they have the detail enhancement set too high, giving a distinct "video" look. But that's adjustable in camera. The gamma and color is quite adjustable in camera as well, so you should be able to dial in a better look.

 

What concerns me though is the motion rendering of 24P stuff, at least on the SD demo. For some reason it looks too electronic to me, more so than other 24P video, even when they claim it was 1/48 sec. shutterspeed.

 

I'm afraid the XDCAM HD system is still pretty new, so there's probably not that much demo material out there.

[Sol Train Saihati]

Just came off a short shot on xdcam... As much as I slated the camera when I first heard about it, I have to say that the results we got were pretty unbeleivable.. Excellent colour rendition and outstanding detail are just the a few of the things I could list. For the film we were shooting(A grimy British kitchen sink drama), it could hardly have looked any better. More than once we found ourselves saying "I dont understand how it looks so good."

 

It's biggest asset is that in combination with a well calibrated high-res monitor, the gamma controls can be tweaked scene by scene to get very close to the final look you're going for in-camera, thus potentially saving money on post costs.

 

The only thing missing is the latitude. Now I know thats a pretty big thing to be missing, but its definitely a "look", and matched with the appropriate lighting and production design its possible to attain beatiful high contrast images. IMHO its streets ahead of Digibeta, the HVX and pretty much anything up to the 750 and the Varicam, but I suppose you would expect that for your twenty grand.

 

All I can say is, stick a half decent lens on it and don't knock it till you've tried it.

 

Will post up some stills ASA.