PDW-F800 and Ziess Digi Zoom
 

I was lucky enough to have a decent play with a PDW-F800 at the weekend shooting an airshow. It's not really all that different to a PDW-700 (as we already know) but it was interesting to play with the overcrank features. One tool that came in very useful was the focus assist. trying to follow fast moving aircraft and keep them in focus is tricky. The focus assist bar graph is a big help as you can see the graph start to slip to the left if the image is getting any softer. You can see the graph moving before you notice the loss of focus in the viewfinder.
The Ziess 6 to 28mm digi zoom is a beautiful lens. The edge to edge sharpness is astounding as is the lack of distortion. However using it handheld was hard work as it weighs a good 2 or 3Kg and that was without the focus knob kit. I really should have used some drop down hand grips, but we didn't have time to do a full rig.
The camera had version 1.5 of the XDCAM firmware so once again I was able to experiment with the proxy on to USB device workflow which is very slick.

PDW-700 Viewfinder choice
 

Oops - should have been a new thread.