Urgent Help! Need to match PDW-350 & Sony Ex3's
 

We are flying to New Zealand this week for a Premiere & we are taking with us 6x PMW-350's 3x Sony Ex3's. We also will have quite a few cameraman over there with the same cameras. We will be filming interviews etc.. Using mainly PMW-350's our preferred choice but because there are only a small portion available in NZ on these dates we have decided to use the Sony EX3's to make up for the large amount of cameras required.

My question is if theres anyone in the community that has experience matching these cameras or has picture profiles that could make things easier in getting the EX3 as close as possible to the PMW-350? Footage will be given to International Journalist for Broadcast use.

Many thanks in for any help or advice in advance!!


Christian

Re: Urgent Help! Need to match PDW-350 & Sony Ex3's
 

Hello Christian

The PDW 350 HD REC 709 Gamma i believe is STD 5 (May need to check this for sure)
Sony Ex3' HD REC 709 Gamma is STD 3. So It would be a good idea to have the camera's set to those gamma's. (you can do this in the paint Menu)

Both camera's have the same sensor size of 1/2" but I pretty sure the PDW 350 sensor type is 3-CDD and the EX3 is 3-CMOS so there will probably by a slight colour difference.

You can tweak in the paint menus to get an acceptable look but bear in mind the numeric values on one camera may not be the equivalent on the other, for example you may have to wind down the black levels lower on one camera to get a similar match, but if you have a bit of time to test you should be OK.

I always like to use Preset White as my preferred choice, but I think you have a more precise white balance on the PDW 350 meaning that the you can read the whole value rather then the Preset going up in increments of 100 on the EX3. In this case it may be a good Idea to white balance both cameras on value A for example and sort of look at them as A being your new Preset. This should make the overall look very simmilar, not 100% spot on but very close and acceptable.

Good luck with the shoot, I have been to NZ and it's an amazing place.

Kind regard's

Kev

Re: Urgent Help! Need to match PDW-350 & Sony Ex3's
 

Hi Christian

I just noticed you are using the PMW 350, not the PDW 350, so this is also a 3-CMOS chip. This is good as it will mean the colour's will be more accurate as you have the same sensor on both the camera's

Good Luck

Re: Urgent Help! Need to match PDW-350 & Sony Ex3's
 

Due to the different sensors (2/3" on the 350 and 1/2" on the EX3) There are differences in the gammas and colour matrices used on the PMW-350 and EX3 and this means it's hard to get a perfect match. The best match IMHO comes from using the Cinegammas/Hypergammas as this removes differences in the way the knee operates. As this is for direct hand off to journalists it would probably be wise to use the broadcast safe gammas, so on the EX3's I would use Cinegamma 2 and to match this on the 350's I would use Hypergamma 2 which is the same curve. (Cinegamma 1 is the same as Hypergamma 4 but these go to 109%).

Re: Urgent Help! Need to match PDW-350 & Sony Ex3's
 

Hi Christian,

I own a PMW-350 and have used the EX3 extensively side by side. The EX3 lens has an infra red issue which makes it nearly impossible to math the cameras completely. You can get them very close but the blues will be very drastically. Try using a IR filter on the EX3. That will get them to match up a little better.

Cheers, and good luck...

Re: Urgent Help! Need to match PDW-350 & Sony Ex3's
 

Depends on the age of the EX3. Later EX3s have the same IR filter as the EX1R which is a big improvement over the early EX3's.