First impressions?
 

Hi all
Now that the first EX1s are out in the wild, could anyone enlighten me in the following aspects?

I'm going to be shooting a lot of short scripted work, dramatic mainly, but also with a fair amount of green screening, which I hope to do tethered to an Apple cart. So SDI is probably in my future, in one form or another.

I tend to specialize in sci fi, love stories (beauty shots, aka low DOF), and the odd doco style shoot (but shot film discipline, not pray and spray - I have other cameras for that if necessary).

Tapeless don't phase me one way or another (not after 400ft 35mm loads) and I know about archiving issues too (and we have HP LTO3 units at work).

I usually apply a ton of post filtering to get the video-ness out of a drama shoot, and nearly always shoot with a 35mm DOF box and Nikon fast primes when I'm doing this kind of work. Of course on reality style stuff it's usually straight video with a wide angle adaptor, usually.

So - JVC, Canon A1, Pana HVX or Sony EX1 for this, d'you think?

Yeah, I know. Red. Wavelets. Seen it, love it.

But I'm talking about an approx $5-7k (i.e. mid range) camera to own for now and get stuff in the can. I don't particularly want to line up for Red rentals, and I'm one step away from being able to afford one for my own amusement. Say a year or so away. However, a Red is definitely in my future after that.

So what would your recommendation be to get me from here (HDV) to there?

Cheers
Chris

I would recommend the Sony PMW-EX1.

Chris,
The EX1 would be an excellent choice, but if that's stretching your budget, you might consider the Sony HVR-V1U. It has 24p and 30p, as well as HDMI output. Even though the HDV output is 4:2:0, the internal color encoding is 4:2:2. I think 4:2:2 is what would be coming out of the HDMI port.
Ken