PDW-F350 not good enough

[Matthias Koehler]

Hi to all of You!

Today I rented a PDW-F350 and made some trial shootings in typical situations. After that, I transferred them into my Avid Media Composer. And the result is: The camera head is not good enough. Especially in deep dark colour areas the noise is too much. And there is no possibility to produce a good and sharp SD picture from the HD material, it always look unsharp.

The PDW-F350 will not be my next camera, I think.

Matthias

[Nate Weaver]

Great. Thanks Matthias.

See ya around.

[Hayes Roberts]

Aw shucks, just when I was gettin' ready to buy one. Guess I' ll stick with the Optura, I think. Thanks for keeping me safe.

[Matthias Koehler]

Originally Posted by Nate Weaver

Great. Thanks Matthias.

I am so sorry, because the last weeks I thought that this will be a good solution for me, I like the workflow with the cartridges, but it is very strange that I come to the solution, that my 12 years old Ikegami HC-390 with Betacam-SP BVV-5 produces the better images. The PDW-F350 has more pixels, of course. I can play the signal on a 1920 by 1080 Monitor and it looks medium good and medium sharp, but the general picture quality looks like a cheap old UVW-100 camera.

This is a bad conclusion for me, because now I need to make some trial recordings with the Ikegami Editcam HD and probably I need to buy a camera which costs nearly three times the PDW-F350.

The customers should use more high-quality tube monitors and beamers on their events, then we would not need any HD at all...

Matthias

[Tip McPartland]

Mathias,

We're all so glad that you saved us from the vile machinations of the engineers at Discovery HD Theater who have approved this camera for 100% content on their flagship channel known for some of the most stunning images on HD television.

Of course this may be because of the evil schemes of that diabolical rascal who is the chief cinematographer for Discovery and who does all his shooting with the F350.

Those poor Discovery engineers, had they only waited a few months, they would have had the benefit of your exhaustive testing and been spared their supposedly rigorous, precise, scientific and thorough analysis.

But oh no, they couldn't wait for your difinitive word and instead blindly trusted all their first-rate instrumentation and seasoned, expert evaluaters then jumped to the silly conclusion that Sony knows how to make a reasonably good camera -- those engineers must be writhing in humiliation.

But thanks to you, unlike those ignoramuses, we now know that we can just dust off that old UVW-100 and get the same quality images!

I wish I was like Nate so I could just laugh off opinions that are this far off the mark, but my sarcasm reflex kicks in. Sorry.

Tip

[Juergen Schmitz]

Hi Tip, hi Nate,
really great answeres! Makes me laugh more then one time! I think I talked to Matthias at the Sony XDCAM HD Roadshow in Berlin and he told me that the image quality of our XDCAM HD footage presented on the roadshow was so bad compared to his Beta SP. Sony rented me for presentation of the aquisition part of their roadshow (I showed the people something about the great workflow and the abilities of the F350).

I was proud to see our videos on a 4k Sony Beamer and was impressed by the good picture quality (4k is 4times HD resolution!). The only mistake was that the beamer was set to 60Hz an our footage had 50Hz.

Of course the PDWF350 and F330 are not so good for shooting in lowlight areas. But the exellent picture quality makes me forget about this (Discovery Channel accepts only 65mm,35mm, 16mm, HDCAM SR, HDCAM AND XDCAM HD with 35 MBit/s).
I saw HD footage at the roadshow on HD tube monitors and HD flat screens and i was really, really impressed by the high picture quality.

Years ago we started filming with the UVW100. After the UVW100 we changed to the DSR370. Last year we bought the F330 camera. Today when I playback some old Betas from the UVW I am really impressed how the picture quality improved in this ten years.

Matthias, perhaps it is the best when you stay furthermore with your Beta SP and watch your films on a 4:3 tube monitor. You are right- no one needs this great, excellent HD picture quality.

Greetings from a XDCAM-HD fan in germany
Peter Schmitz ;-)
P.S.: Nate and Tip, please excuse my bad english

[Matthias Koehler]

Originally Posted by Juergen Schmitz

I think I talked to Matthias at the Sony XDCAM HD Roadshow in Berlin and he told me that the image quality of our XDCAM HD footage presented on the roadshow was so bad compared to his Beta SP.

Exactly. Take a close look to Your Unimog lawnmower and the Elbtunnel recordings. This has nothing to do with good picture quality. But If You always used Sony cameras, You are probably not able to compare it to Ikegami pictures. I repeat: The camera head is not good enough and this is why the codec gets problems.

Yesterday, I presented my trial recordings to some non-camera persons, and all of them judged the Ikegami SD material as the one with the better picture quality.

Until there are better cameras available, I advice my customers to play my videos on a SD tube monitor and don't invest in HD.

The PDW-F350 camera section is not more than a Z1 in a professional housing.

Matthias

[Matt Trecartin]

Hi Matthas, I'm curious as to what lens were you using for your tests?

[Matthias Koehler]

It is a Fujinon HSs18x5.5BRM. I am sure that the lens is not the problem.

Matthias

[Chris Hurd]

I too am sure that the lens is not the problem. Thread closed.