EX1 questions
 

Hi all,

I'm considering buying a used EX1 with about 120 hours on the meter, and I wonder what do you guys think. Is it a solid buy? The price seems right, and it's about $1500-$2000 less than a new EX1R from BH.

Another question: do I need a card reader with the EX1, or can I load footage to my computer directly from the camera?

Thanks!

I used to say i'd never buy a 2nd hand camera- but that was when tape ruled the world, and tape mechanisms wear out.

With a tapeless theres less moving parts, so less to go wrong.

Certainbly sound like a good deal.

Does it have any warrenty left? And i'd give it a thorugh check over- making sure the lens rings operate smoothly, and visually inspect for any signs of droppage. Ask about it's history too. Compact cam's like the ex series tend to get used in all sorts of places, and I wouldnt like to buy a camera that been used on a boat out at sea, for example.

RE: card reader. Ive only used the EX3, but since they're very similar inside, i dont think you should need a card reader. Footage transfer is transfered via USB. The firewire port can only be used to output a realtime HDV stream i think

EX1 questions
 

Thanks, Peter. So I guess you wouldn't buy off of ebay?

And about the card question -- can I load footage directly to the computer, without a card reader?

Yes, you can use the EX1 as a card reader, but I highly recommend getting an external card reader.
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/526430-REG/Sony_SBAC_US10_SBAC_US10_SxS_Memory_Card.html
For only $270 it is well worth it. It's faster, a lot more convenient, and will save a lot of wear and tear on your camcorder.

Also, if you happen to have a notebook computer that has an ExpressCard slot, you can just use that instead.

EX1 questions
 

Thanks, Doug, it looks great.

Cards
 

If you have a Macbook Pro they have a slot that accepts the SxS cards. Very handy in the field.

Many PC based laptops also have an ExpressCard/34 slot. You can also get a PCI-e based card for your desktop PC that will accept either a PCI-e based and USB based card. The only thing about the desktop option is that it is not hotswapable. Funny that my laptop has no problems with hotswap of PCI based SxS but the motherboards for most desktops can't do it.

-Garrett

Although we edit mainly with Final Cut Pro, we use a cheap light 13" PC laptop as a reader SxS and storage, paired with external rugged hard drive. It provides us with redundant portable media solution. Laptop fits the EX-1 camera bag perfectly. MacBook Pro 15" does not come with ExpressCard anymore (only 17"s do) and in case of some damage during the shoot, it's easier to loose a sub 500$ PC.

We have recently used that setup, along with white MacBook, during a shoot in africa and it provided us with pretty neat (in terms of traveling with a lot stuff) solution, which case of trouble wouldn't cost us a lot (of course I'm not talking about the video gear...). To add to safety, we had, what I called myself a "spread raid". original files from EX-1 were kept on the PC laptop drive and on external one and the files transfered to Final Cut were kept on the Mac and also on the external hard drive. To add to that, external hard drives were, most of the times, traveling separately. So altogether we had 4 drives with footage. We could do away with less than that probably, but when you travel 10k kilometers away from home, well... It's not so easy to get this shot again...

One lesson learned, by the way - don't be cheap on storage. We thought 500GB will be more than enough (per drive). We should have gone for 750GB easily, just to have a nice comfortable margin :)

BTW EX-1 proved very robust under heavy temperature conditions. No problems with it, even when it was so hot I could barely touch it.