David Williams

David covers most of it. I use one daily, and wouldn't trade it for anything else in it's price range. The codec is 6 or 7 generation, and is very reliable motion wise in normal use. Like anything, you can break it if you try, but in setups you would actually use it's great. It's VBR, and actually peaks near 90Mbit in slowmo, and the 35Mbit average applies to all HQ frame rates and modes. It runs at 16GB per hour roughly. It is 8bit and long-gop, so for any heavy grading or processing I'd suggest transcoding to a 10bit intra-frame codec designed for editing, but for butt editing, and basic stuff it's easy to use. It does have 10bit 4:2:2 HD-SDI out. With a Letus Ultimate, Letus EX3 Relay, and using a HD-SDI recorder, you can get fantastic quality. Depending on your output medium, 99% of people would not be able to pick that from a Red. You actually have a touch more latitude with the EX3. Use Cine Gamma 1, leave the high and low lights, and crush the mids a bit to give more contrast in post.

To retain flexibility, sometimes the best option is not to export to mov or mxf, but simply copy the entire BPAV folder on to your storage drive. That way you can export to mac or windows at a later stage in any fashion you wish. I'm pretty sure Avid can use MXF on windows though, but double check. Also, when in doubt, try the manufacturer, they can often help :) http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/micro-xdcamex...kflowDocs.shtml

There's a new product from Rosco that might do the job. Never seen it or used it, or know the cost though :) It's a two stage polarizing system, one for the lens, one for the window. Worth a look. http://www.rosco.com/us/video/roscoview.asp

I have a Tiffen Ultra-Pol 4x4. Sunlight here can be very harsh, but it handles it well. http://www.davidwilliams.com.au/wp-content...y/morgan/05.jpg

The stock EX3 lens is fairly wide, 5.8mm giving @ 63 deg FOV, or 31mm SLR equivalent. There is a bit of barrel distortion though at that length. If you need wider and more rectilinear I'd go with 1/2" as Brian suggests. Any of the Fujinon or Canon 1/2" ENG lenses will pop straight on with the supplied 1/2" adapter. 2/3" and Nikon mounts are available too. The Nikon crop factor is about 5.4 I think. If you must have shallow FOV your best option is the Letus EX3 relay with a Letus Ultimate. The relay is faster than the stock lens F1.5 vs F1.9, then F0.5 for the adapter, plus whatever lens you bang on the end. Actually the EX3 lens ramps from F1.9 to F2.8 between 10mm and wide at 81.2mm, so when you zoom into the adapter to frame it at @ 40mm and F2.4 really. So with a fast prime attached you might end up with only @ a 1 stop loss overall. The relay is fixed to give academy fov, and the Ultimate can come with your choice of various mounts, including PL. The relay is pretty new though, I don't know if they have hit rental yet?

That's like saying, "I have car, now where do I go?". What is your project? What do you want it to look like? Why is the native lens not suitable? Do you even understand what the effects of the different types of lenses will be?

It has a little brother, the NanoFlash, weighs under 1lb and is compact. You lose analogue audio in, 2 CF slots, and uncompressed, compared to the FlashXDR.

Art Adams at http://provideocoalition.com rated like this- Seemed pretty spot on to me from my usage of the EX3.

The EX3 lens mount is proprietary, but it comes with a 1/2" Sony Bayonet Mount adapter. The adapter works with current 1/2" lenses used with the Sony F3** series such as Fujinon and Canon. It may well work with your Canon lens, if that lens is a Sony 1/2" Bayonet Mount. But do bear in mind it's an older lens, and SD at that. The EX3 native lens is pretty good for it's price, and sharp enough to resolve over 1000 lines under good conditions. It may well be better than your old SD lenses.

I've never used the PHU-60, but reading on early versions, they were not 100% reliable. I'm sure they have improved though. You can't overcrank well (or at all?) with them. Unless you really need continuous recording time for some practical reason, I wouldn't bother with the added complexity. Extra weight, separate battery, adds another failure point, added expense. Using the MxM with SDHC cards is far cheaper, 2 x 16GB gives you @120 minutes at max quality, and you can hotswap while recording. Soon there will be usable 32GB SDHC cards, or may be already. Or you can go for the more expensive SxS cards in 32GB. The EX sensor suffers from the same problems all current CMOS sensors have, skew, partial exposure and far red or IR contamination. The EX scans the sensor from top to bottom (actually the reverse, but it's flipped for output) line by line in 1/60 of a second in NTSC modes, 1/50 in PAL. So as you move the camera, strong verticals can appear to lean slightly. Normal usage, it's unnoticeable. The same scanning causes partial flash exposures, where within the 1/60 of a second a flash either starts or finishes, making @ half the image showing a flash, the other half normal. Shutter speeds can help, but it is difficult to overcome completely. The EX is also sensitive to far red which usually shows up in certain types of black cloth under tungsten lights, sometimes sunlight too. Some blacks, most not, will appear brownish. As with any camera, you have issues you need to work around. I'm very happy with my EX3, I understood all these issues before I brought it, and there is nothing in it's price range I would swap it with. With the addition of a portable HD-SDI recorder to take advantage on the 4:2:2 10bit output, I won't need to upgrade for awhile yet.

My EX3 did not come with a card reader. If you plug the camera into your computer via USB, it functions as a removable drive. You copy the files across using XDCAM Clipbrowser. Your not really using it as a deck in the strict sense, it's not playing back. It's about 6-8 times real time to copy. You might also want to look into ExpressCard adapters. Using one with SDHC cards is far cheaper than SxS, and many recent laptops have an SDHC slot. The only gotcha is limited overcranking, but you just use the SxS that comes with for that. http://mxmexpress.com/

One of the blokes at Abelcine banged one together. Never tried them, I have an EX3 and matrix settings don't transfer well. The EX series is so flexible for it's price range. Complaining about not liking the default settings is just bizarre. HVX Matches for EX1 PP1: Cine V Matrix – - Select: High Sat - Level 0 - Phase +2 - R-G -11 - R-B -23 - G-R +38 - G-B 0 - B-R +17 - B-G -23 Detail – - Level –30 (subjective) - Frequency 15 Gamma – - Level -1 - Select: Cine 1 Black – -2 Black Gamma - -99 PP2: Cine D Matrix – - Select: High Sat - Level 0 - Phase +6 - R-G +22 - R-B -36 - G-R +19 - G-B 0 - B-R +14 - B-G -16 Detail – - Level –30 (subjective) - Frequency 15 Gamma – - Level -1 - Select: Cine 1 Black – -2 Black Gamma - -96 PP3: HD NORM Matrix – - Select: Standard - Level -5 - Phase +1 - R-G +8 - R-B -30 - G-R +15 - G-B -24 - B-R 0 - B-G +10 Detail – - Level –30 (subjective) - Frequency 15 Gamma – - Level +11 - Select: STD4 Black – -1 Black Gamma - -52 PP4: FLUO Matrix – - Select: FL Light - Level -8 - Phase -5 - R-G -64 - R-B -24 - G-R +64 - G-B -18 - B-R +24 - B-G -23 Detail – - Level –30 (subjective) - Frequency 15 Gamma – - Level +11 - Select: STD4 Black – -1 Black Gamma - -52

If you want to save some money, an EX1 will do a great job, as long as your in progressive mode or recording the HD-SDI signal to computer. Native EX color space is 4:2:0 which keys fine in progressive, but in interlace gets pretty saw toothed. If you record HD-SDI you get 4:2:2 which keys well in both modes. The EX also has decent detail settings to let you tweak edge detail if needed. An EX1 with a Wafian HD-SDI recorder gives you 1920*1080 10bit 4:2:2 Cineform for around 15K I think?. The only advantage for small studio green screen you might get out of a 700 would be the lens, but you then only get 8bit. You could always go EX3 with a broadcast lens for an extra 10K or so.

If you set the shutter to ECS mode, you can manually tune to the correct frequency. With flashes, setting shutter to off reduces partial exposures a great deal. If you have little or no movement, setting shutter to SLS 2 stops partials almost completely. That's two frame accumulation, so you effectively halve your frame rate.

They are basically the same. The EX3 has more switches and buttons, TC in/out, genlock in, studio remote option, form factor, lenses, better viewfinder. The SDI out in SD mode maps 60/30/24p to NTSC and 50/25p to PAL which could trip you up on older monitors. You do have to set to SD in the Video Set menu for SDI Out too, if you haven't done that.

I think you miss-understand the concept.

I'm imagining something analogous to Panalog LUTs. Each frame records the maximum data within your set stop range, and you have a series of generic LUTs you can apply in post. Along with a tool to modify the generics and create custom LUTs, with keyframed moving zones, etc. Done right, it would be very flexible, and not to difficult a process.

It has ECS mode for the shutter. You just set it into that mode, then tune the shutter to the targets refresh rate. The only problem you may have is other sources of light at differing Htz, usually computer monitors. You can often set them to match what you need though.

John Galt is working on a HDR sensor, with up to 6 exposures per pixel in one pass. Info is nearer the end. http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/th...uture-of-pixels