It has arrived!
 

Just spoke to a friend who has was holding his EX1 in his hand as we spoke. It had arrived at the suppliers today and he could not wait for the delivery so he took his car and went down and picked it up tonight.

My guess is that we will see a handful of happy campers in the EU getting their cameras in the next couple of days.

Awesome! Time for a footage section, I can't wait to see images from different users.

As Ola already has pointed out in the first post, I - or rather the University of Kalmar in Sweden - have taken delivery of what seems to be one of the first EX1s in the world....?! What he didn't mention was that is not one but two EX1s....!

http://www.bolanski.com/ex1.php

Yes, we're quite excited and happy...

Excellent... congratulations Per-Axel on the arrival of your twins! That's a great photo.

I am happy to make server space and bandwidth available for you (and anybody else) to host EX1 video. Just send an email to me (chris at dvinfo dot net) and I'll set you up.

Per-Axel,

You are a star both behind and in front of the camera(s).

Hey that black one looks like it could be mine.... :-)


lets see some footage.... outside, in the daylight...

Yeah, let's see some footage:
1. Outdoor fast motion/sports
2. Indoor low light
3. Rich colors
4. Slo-mo (overcranking)

5. depth of field test ;)

Mine just turned up too :)

Just as it's getting dark so it's bit late for outside footage but I'll certainly try and grab some for you all tomorrow.

Initial impressions:

I won't bother going through everything unless something strikes me as being different than I expected after reading the various reviews, and I was expecting a lot!

> There are rubber protectors over the various connectors on the camera. This was something I mentioned in another thread that I was a little concerned about but Sony have come through and included rubber covers on the i-Link and headphone sockets as well as the SDI connector on the back.

> As in my XH-A1 the microphone holder is too large to hold my Sen 416, I'll need to source an adapter. I had hoped that Sony might include one with the camera as others have mentioned having a rubber adapter included with Z1's but there is no such adapter with the EX1.

> I'm finding the camera a little awkward to grip at the moment, the strap is a lot lower down on the grip than in my canon and as a result I find the camera is tipping to the left, this is probably just something I need to get adjusted correctly / get used too.

That's it really, at least so far until the battery charges and I can switch it on.

regards

Paul.

More thoughts
 

Okay, the batteries charged and after playing around with the camera I'd like to add the following thoughts...

> The zoom ring on the lens feels a little bit wobbly to me, I expected it to feel quite solid, but then I've never tried a proper video camera lens before either. There seems to be quite a lot of play in it as in it's easy to wobble the screw in post with a clicky feel and it turns really easily. There's a lot less resistance than the zoom controller ring on my XH-A1.

> Another one about zoom. After my XH-A1 I find it a little strange that I can't use both the zoom controller on the grip and the zoom ring on the lens when I feel like it. When the zoom is set to 'servo' the ring is locked, and when it's set to manual the grip controls are disabled. Is this normal for pro lenses?

> There is a lot of strange green flickering going on when changing modes or going between camera / media. This doesn't appear in recorded video, but all the same it's a little off putting and gives the feeling that something is wrong. I'll be interested to hear if everyone see's the same thing.

> Peaking. As far as I can tell, this doesn't function at all well. I can't even tell if it's turned on or off. Maybe I need to learn something to get it set up properly but when I turn on peaking on the A1 it makes it much easier to focus, on the EX1 it doesn't help at all at the moment.

[edit] This was confusion on my part. Peaking does work, but it works very differently to the XH-A1 which I why I missed it. On the A1 peaking enables a kind of sharpening effect over the entire image making i easier to focus. On the sony any hard edged, high contrast images glow when in focus. It's easier to see if you change the colour of the peaking to red. It doesn't seem to function that well on softer subjects though such as faces etc.[/edit]

> White balance. I found it quite strange that doing a manual white balance doesn't store the setting after switching the camera off. Again this may be a setting somewhere but I'm surprised that the default is not to remember a balance setting after selecting preset a or b.

[edit] this was user error, the camera does remember wb settings if set correctly. Preset B is by default set to AWB. After changing it to MEM you can use it to store manual wb settings. [/edit]

> viewfinder. The viewfinder seems very low quality after using the LCD, I can't imagine anyone using it over the LCD unless brightness is a factor.

> Quick / slow. Trying to use this I saw the rolling bars as in the clip which was available online, I think it's a shutter issue as selecting various shutter speeds did have an effect. This was not under flourescents though so it is nothing to do with that.

Next task will be to capture some footage, I'll report back on that later.

Paul.

Doesn't sound too good, Paul; not at all encouraging - especially the rolling bars effect, and the instability while changing modes!

As far as the peaking is concerned, did you try to change its intensity? You cannot do it on the XH-A1, so I thought you were not aware of this :).

However, don't worry at all - you have Prime Support, don't you? The most striking flaws you're describing cannot possibly be inherent, and hence must be fixable. A memento for all those tempted to import cheaper from outside EU...

No these issues do not sound good...Hopefully we will here others impressions so far as well to compare and see if there is a trend.

It's not all bad, you all know the good points about the camera already so I only listed the things that effected my use.

The white balancing issue was definitely user error, so ignore that.

I haven't read the manual fully yet and am only going from my experience with the Canon - I'm sure Sony has different ways of doing things and I need to learn the camera.

I'm looking forward to seeing the footage but I have a deadline and need to work tonight so it'll have to wait till tomorrow unfortunately.

Paul, I did get to play with a preproduction model. Some of the issues I believe are "user" related. I bumped into a few of them too and the Sony rep clarified how the functions work.

I believe there's another switch for the zoom. It was near the underside if I remember correctly.

I think the white balance saving involves doing the steps in a proper sequence. It may be white balance and the hit the button to assign it (or was it the other way around). I remember getting that wrong too.

The green flashes do sound odd. I wonder if you're seeing this regarding specific settings that might be causing some sort of "internal reboot" such as changing frame rates.

I used peaking and thought it was major flexible. It worked fine for me and I was even able to change the color of the peak. The expanded view seems easier to manage though.

Some good points
 

Feeling like I'm being overly negative I want to post some good points I've noticed too.

> Menu changes. There's a really useful method for changing various settings on this camera. Even though settings like shutter speed may be buried in the menu's, all these settings apear around the LCD display and you can change them by cycling around the LCD with the SEL/SET controller and change the settings right there without going in to the menu's.

This might be common on other Sony's but after the canon I found it incredibly useful.

> LCD quality. This has all been said but the LCD is beautiful, sitting in my editing room with a single light the LCD is showing an image that looks gorgeous, the colours all look correct and the low light imaging on the camera seems way better than the XH-A1.

> DOF. After the Xh-A1 there is a very noticeable difference in DOF, I'll try and get some examples of this over the next few days.

> Build quality. The camera feels a lot more solid than my Canon, it is weighty and just feels like a pro piece of kit. I was never really happy with the construction of the XH-A1, this camera definately delivers in that department. The Zoom rocker alone tells this story, it's huge and solid, not like the creaky one on the A1.

Paul

Your right Craig, I really just wanted to report my discoveries as I progressed with the camera, it might help others to look out for the same things, although I'm sure there's plenty of more experienced users who will not have so many issues.

The wb settings was indeed user error - I have edited the original post accordingly.

The peaking does work, it just doesn't do what I'm used to with the Canon. On the sony, peaking highlights any contrasty hard edged elements in focus, it does not seem help when focusing on faces or other non hard edges items. With the canon, peaking applies a sharpness to the entire image which helps with focusing, that's what I was looking for and why I thought it wasn't working.

I can see that the sony method would be a lot more accurate with the correct subject, although it doesn't seem quite as useful on softer subjects. I did set it to high and had the colour set to red too which seems to show up a lot more.

regards

Paul

Paul, I know the differences in peaking implementations by Canon and Sony very well from my own experience and can tell you this: you MUST set the right intensity (depending on the subject, brightness etc) for the Sony's peaking to work best; if you do it's far superior to Canon's!

I agree, it seems a lot more intelligent and I can see that Its going to prove a lot more useful. It's really good when there's a shallow DOF and as you adjust focus you can see the peaking jumping from one object to the next.

I'm about to try capturing some footage to the mac, I'll use this post to update my progress.

> Connectors. The USB connector is located in a panel beneath a plastic cover near the underside of the grip. This is the first thing I've seen on the camera which doesn't seem to be up to the rest of the cameras quality. You can't insert a connecting lead without first rotating the grip out of the way, and the plastic cover seems very cheap and nasty. It's not a great fit and is held on by only two small strips of hard plastic. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the first thing to break if no card reader is used.

With the cable inserted, the camera does not sit flat on your desk due the rotated grip sticking down, this may result in wear on the grip if you move the camera around while connected. I found that fitting my tripod mount helped in this respect, but it's worth noting anyway.

> USB Cable. The supplied USB cable seems quite low in quality, it's a thin cable and is only 1m in length. I think it's a standard cable though so if like me you're computer is located on the floor a small distance from your desk a longer cable may be something you'll want to invest in.

> Capturing. The capture process seemed very easy indeed. I created an XDCAM EX 720/25p project in FCP6, selected import>SONY XDCAM... and immediately the XDCAM import utility appeared showing all the clips on the camera. Import speed seemed good. A 2m 30s clip took 20 seconds to import.

Editing seems fast, not a bad word to say about the import process :)

> Copying cards. I also tried copying the contents of the SxS cards on to my desktop. Connecting the camera mounted the cards on my desktop as 2 separate volumes, each containing a folder called BPAV. I copied one 2.6Gb BPAV folder to my desktop which took around 3 minutes.

Running final cut again, I pointed the SONY XDCAM import utility at my desktop folder and it picked up the clips instantly allowing me to use them in exactly the same way as when coming directly from the camera. SO this proves it's possible to just copy the contents of the cards to a laptop on location without having to use any specialist software at that stage. Importing from the hard drive took around the same time as doing so from the camera, the app said x5.2, I assume thats 5.2x real time.

Paul.

20 seconds for 2:30 source seems about 7.5x real time. Even 5x is pretty good. Sony said 10x or faster for 34 connections. USB would be slower. This is still very fast.

The files that were linked to on this site aren't importing for me though. I open them in ClipBrowser and it creates the BPAV folder and it plays the clips.

I open FCP 6.0.2, the 2.1 Xfer tool and I try to point to the BPAV folder and it's grayed out for me. I tried import on both Intel and PPC Mac. ClipBrowser itself only works on Intel Mac.

What could I be doing wrong?

Yeah, that confused me initially too, but you have to add the folder containing the BPAV folder (in my case 'Desktop'), not the BPAV folder itself. I guess it assumes your importing from a SxS card and so you would normally point to the card not it's contents.

If you were on a shoot and copying cards to a laptop it would probably be best to copy the BPAV folders to a set of descriptive folders anyway.

regards

Paul.

Point to . . . what . . . to add the folder?

Nothing I try works so I'm obviously not pointing to whatever I need to point to.

Place the BPAV folder inside a folder called (card1), and then in the import utility choose 'Add' and then select your card1 folder.

If it doesn't work then maybe those sample files are incomplete.

Paul.

Didn't work. The files are .mp4 pointed to here
http://www.bolanski.com/ex/home/ex1-test-shots/
Clip Browser creates the BPAV and can play the files but nothing I do allows the Xfer plugin to access them to import into FCP 6.0.2. Any folder I add containing the BPAV shows as 0 clips.

I'd like to figure this out also. It's been bugging me since those clips were posted last week

So it's not only me?

Has anybody gotten a way to import the clips into FCP? Again I've got no problem playing the clips on Intel Mac (and creating the BPAV folder) for the clips posted last week as well as the ones that went up today.

I have not been able to get these into FCP. They play in the XDCam EX Viewer but I can't export them for some reason. Also VLC seems to be able to play these.

I think we're running into an important issue here.

I'd like to know if I can deliver such .mp4 files to clients so they can import and edit. I hope someone can help us get this sorted out.

Wow...
Sorry to hear this?
What the...
I'm using Vegas so I'm of no help.

The native mp4's can also be edited in NewTek's SpeedEdit 1.5 editor.
No conversion needed.

Paul,

When and from whom did you get your ex1 from? I need to chase my supplier!

Cheers,

Phil

I can give you an original clip from our cameras with all meta data and correct structure if you like. What format do you want? (I don't have time to give you all kinds)

/Andy

Andreas,
Please shoot a short clip aiming at a white wall with the aperture wide open and slowy go from wide to full zoom. If you like, you can downsize it.
A lot of us are wondering if there are other EX1 cams that have the vignetting issue.
One new user has it showing in the top left corner starting at 10mm and through to 25mm.

I'll put it in my todo list. When I have time I'll try to get you a clip.

Thanks Andreas!

Ahh, I thought the .MP4 were the original clips. On Mac, I have Sony EX Clip Browser, XDCAM transfer software 2.1, FCP 6.0.2, I'd think the original clips should import. Apparently other Mac/FCP users with apparently all the right software in place, can't import anything that's been uploaded here (AFAIK).

ClipBrowser certainly works and on Import to it I get BPAV but can't get transfer software to see the clips.

If the .MP4 are not the original clips, all I'd need are the original clips in whatever from the copy from the card to your hard drive.

I'd like that too. that would be great.

vince

They are originals but on the cards there is more meta information files and each clip has its own folder. So I can give you a folder with the files and keep its original structure if that is a must. If I have time that is...

This might be a stupid question but are your really supposed to go inte every folder, find the MP4-file, and add it manually in the clip browser? This would take forever after a day of filming? Or is there a way to import all the clips from a card with the stroke of a button?

The Clip Browser works like this. You browse for a source that contains the folder BPAV folder. That's card A There is a BPAV on the card B also. (EDIT I said the B card had a folder named BPBV but that was wrong.)

So when using USB there will be two removable disks one for Card A and one for Card B and the folders on them.

You don't have to browse inside the cards and if you copy/paste the folder from a card to a hard drive then just browse to that drive in the Clip Browser Software.

There is also an option inside the Clip Browser Software to merge two folders into one so I guess you can build an archive from all your cards onto a hard drive, haven't tried that yet.

I will put a zipped file on my server tomorrow when I have time to, since there are some files on the cards that I don't have here at the moment.

/Andreas