Something BIG on OCT 20, 2009 from SONY

[Ron Wilber]

since it's on the xdcam site i'm sure it's not a dslr. Is making such a bold statement such as "SOMETHING BIG IS COMING" something sony usually does? IF not I'm thinking it will be something like a 2/3 cam that is in the ex1 price range.. to me nothing else would be worth such pomp and circumstance.

[Paul Chiu]

a 2/3 in about the same size as the EX1 would have me on line this christmas
i wonder though if a new zeiss lens is in store.

:-)

[Max Allen]

The next camera in the EX line I think, a step up from EX3.

[Sean Seah]

Very likely to be the EX1R, EX1 replacement. Just wondering how can they make it better if not for a larger sensor like 2/3"? Unless they manage to shrink the EX1 and drop the price?

[Tim Polster]

Could be interesting

HD has brought the lower end products very close in many ways to the upper end products.

These large companies can continue to make $6,000 to $8,000 cameras or $30,000 cameras and hope the sales are there or...

They can realize the curtain has been pulled back a bit and they need to offer more in the middle to get people to buy.

When Panasonic stated the 1/3" chip HPX-300 was geared for local news affiliates (or a lot were purchased) I thought this was a very negative sign for the state of their business.

When news organizations buy $8,000 cameras, the market for $30,000 cameras looks to be in trouble.

Along with the VDSLRs, maybe the market is in a place it can not go back from?

To me it is not what they offer but at what price they offer it at.

[Perrone Ford]

Originally Posted by Sean Seah

Very likely to be the EX1R, EX1 replacement. Just wondering how can they make it better if not for a larger sensor like 2/3"? Unless they manage to shrink the EX1 and drop the price?

I can think of a ton of ways to make it better...

1. Increase the data rate to 50Mbps
2. Give us a faster lens
3. Allow us to record to both slots at once
4. Improve the resolution of the viewfinder
5. Give us 1080/60p
6. Improve the bus speed to allow SDHC to overcrank fully
7. Rework the camera to give a decent handle for handholding
8. Add HDMI for those who don't want to monitor with HD-SDI and make them both hot
9. Give us some real connectors for goodness sakes
10. Ditch the amateur hour on-off-media power switch.
11. Allow HDV over firewire without requiring that to be recorded to on-board cards.


I could go on, but all of these would be excellent revisions.

[Jim Stamos]

sony is making a big announcement on tues at 2pm. regarding the ex1 line. im hoping it will be a better ergonomically designed ex1 replacement or a shouldmount version.
go to this link below to register for an email from sony that day with all the details

Sony | Micro Site - XDCAM EX

[Alister Chapman]

Sony were not at IBC this year. Instead they are attending several smaller events across europe as well as running a mobile roadshow and lots of workshops and master classes. If your in Europe you can sign up to attend these events at the link below.

Sony have a very large stand at Satis in Paris. The show starts on the morning of Tuesday the 20th. So Europe will get to hear the news first.

Sony - Power of Images

[Peter Moretti]

I expect Sony to take the threat from Red the most seriously of any camera maker simply b/c Red is amied most directly at their buisness. An XL-H1 or a Variacam is not an F23 or 35.

[Stephen Armour]

I think Chris called it right:

a full-size, shoulder mount, EX3 upgrade/bigger brother, with 2/3" chips and 4" transflective pop-up panel.

"Big" is good...

[Sean Seah]

sounds like the rumoured EXR1

[Paul Kousoulides]

Hi Jim,

I'll be very surprised if any new model or EX1/3 revision doesn't include a BBC HD-compliant 50Mb/s+ recording option. Hopefully, this could also be enabled through firmware update for existing users.

My wish list:

integrated far red fix,
jellovision software/hardware fix,
removable viewfinder,
fast Wi-Fi connectivity for future wireless digital mics, remote lens/camera control, multi-cam sync, wireless A/V monitoring
telescopic body (small for transporting extending to shoulder-mount form-factor for handheld)
a cherry ontop

[Jonathan Morrow]

Think about the wording again: Something BIG is coming.... I think the clue is in the title. It isn't something important, or something significant, it is something BIG. For me that means a 2/3 chip. Maybe it wouldn't be too tricky to put the chip from the PDW-700 into the body of an EX1? You would need a new lens I guess, or at least new markings on it. That's where I put my money; a bigger chip.

[Alister Chapman]

The optical block from a PDW-700 won't fit in an EX1, it's much too big, too heavy, it also requires a lot of power and generates a fair bit of heat. CCD's are very power hungry compared to CMOS. In the EX1 one of the clever tricks used in the optical block is to have no light reflections in the red channel, two reflections in the green and only one in the blue. This means that the blue channel is mirrored compared to the other 2. You can't do that with CCD's as CCD's can only be read out one way. CMOS on the other hand can be read any way you want, so on the EX the blue channel is read back-to-front to compensate. This makes the Prism smaller and less complex to produce. It's tricks like this with CMOS that made putting 1/2" sensors in a small, low power, low cost camera possible. You just can't do that with HD CCD's.

Sony are at the Satis Technology event in Paris on Tuesday so maybe there will be an announcement there.

[Paul Kousoulides]

Cancel the cherry - give me cache-record instead.