ex1r or pmw200?

[Jim Stamos]

robert, ive had an ex1r for 1 1/2 years and love it. mine was stolen at a recent film festival i had a film in. having insurance, i had the choice of either camera and decided to go with the ex1r again. the 200 is too new for me to hopefully not have any newcam issues which there always is.plus having 50mb/sec isnt enough to justify getting it. i had no issues with myex1r and it produces gorgeous images.
i will have my new one next week along with a 400.00 rebate and a free 16gb sxs card, neither of which i got when i bought it the first time.
what faults are you talking about that the camera has.
i came from shooting with a shoulder mounted dsr300 so shooting with this camera is like holding a feather. i shoot handheld alot with it and never get tired. others complain about it being too heavy to handhold for long periods. i guess its easier for me since i was shooting with an anchor before.
good luck. i dont have any doubt youll come to appreciate the excellant performance that this camera gives.

[Jack Zhang]

Originally Posted by Jim Stamos

i came from shooting with a shoulder mounted dsr300 so shooting with this camera is like holding a feather. i shoot handheld alot with it and never get tired. others complain about it being too heavy to handhold for long periods. i guess its easier for me since i was shooting with an anchor before.

Oh man. I can hear your pains coming from the DSR-300. For our broadcast news program in College, all we had were DSR-370s and DSR-400s that were assigned for ENG. I wholeheartedly agree the EX1R is so much less strenuous than the 370s and 400s. (though we did get some HPX300s later on and that was MUCH lighter than the 400s, but they were strictly for production use.)

[Robert Bale]

Hi Jim, don't get me wrong, the ex1r is a good camera, and I am happy with it, the biggest thing that I personally struggle with is, when I am shooting wide "say at a concert, on stage shooting back into the crowd" or trees, and landscapes. I find that the picture breaks down, or struggles with hundreds of faces, and seems to look like a low data rate and the camera can't Handel the small details. Close or tight shots look spot on and very happy, so am thinking to get a external data SDI recorder, to help capture at a high data rate, now I am not expert , this is only a thought. If I am filming surfing that's fine because I am at full zoom tight on the surfer.
Any thourghts

[Jim Stamos]

is your backfocus ok? some of the cams have a focus issue, with backfocus, they have cut the price of the nanoflash to half, 1995.00
i would go that route,

[Robert Bale]

Hi, so in your option between the atmos or the nano flash what would be better , I am out filming weddings most of the time

[Jack Zhang]

Since I see you use a FCP workflow, the Atmos may be a better fit. It records high quality MOVs that you can start editing with immediately.

If you're using Vegas or a different PC based workflow (such as Avid) the Nanoflash is better for that since it supports MXF.

However, I do warn of horror stories of lost footage on the Atmos recorders. (B&H has a ton of them)

[Cees van Kempen]

The nanoflash also records high quality .mov files that you can directly edit in FCP.

[Bob Grant]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

In two years time what will an EX1R be worth and what will a PMW-200 be worth?

We're now in possesion of two PMW 200s so I've had a bit of time to look and play with the camera.
I can see the 200 not lasting 2 years.
The vents on the top of the camera seem carefully engineered to ensure any water falling on the camera will end up inside the camera. Going on past experience Sony will not cover any damage done as a result under warranty.
The card door is quite flimsy and why is it silver?
The mic holder will fail and the design means a new replacement will have to be engineered to provide a cold shoe in its place.
The camera attachment issue still doesn't seem to have been addressed.
Overall the camera feels somehow cheaper than the EX1.

Apart from the robustness issue the loss of the rotating handgrip has done nothing to make the camera easier to hold, in fact because the handgrip cannot be rotated it is now significantly harder to hand hold than the EX1.
Certainly the 200 brings some goodness but apart from a slight improvement in PQ the rest seems lost on the majority of the target market. Perhaps Sony listened to their largest customers and ignored the rest of their customers who make up the lion's share of their sales. The other point is a number of the design changes seem based on customer feedback that is years out of date e.g. the matte box issue, fixed long ago. Not that very many EX1 owners seem to want a matte box on the camera anyway.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Bob Grant

The vents on the top of the camera seem carefully engineered to ensure any water falling on the camera will end up inside the camera. Going on past experience Sony will not cover any damage done as a result under warranty.

I think it was said elsewhere that there's nothing "inside" the vents that water/dust will harm - the sensitive parts are sealed from any area that may get damp. I took it to mean that there is some sort of sealed heat exchanging mechanism from the parts generating the heat to the parts open to the vents. (Which would make engineering sense.)

[Jim Michael]

I think I may have written a comment like that but was referring to the sensor - it wouldn't make sense to have the sensor exposed to environmental dust. However, I'd make no such assumption regarding the exposure of electronics to environmental moisture unless the manufacturer specifically stated the unit was sealed from such. I recall reading a complaint someone wrote about his camera getting hosed from sweat during a shoot, where it came in through a top vent. IIRC that was an AF-100.