I'm with Guy on this one - any reason Sony decided to dump the IMX35/50 format from the previous range of XDCAM? Would have neatly addressed his concerns. IMX never really took off in Australia so I don't know much about the history.

One thing I heard about the IMX codec was the incredibly high licencing cost Sony had to pay to use it (many thousands of dollars per camera). I can only go on the word from the fella in the Pro Video shop on this one, he could have been full of it but it would explain why it wasn't more widely used by Sony.

It's my understanding that the XDCAM EX camera will shoot HD only. No SD mode.

-gb-

I would like to ask a similar question to the orginal post.

How is the quality of the SD?

I am looking at justifying a purchase of these cameras and realizing that I will need to deliver on DVD for some time to come.

Right now, I shoot on 1/2" chip SD cameras and I'm thinking - that's a lot of money to purchase another 1/2" chip camera if the footage is still 4:1:1.

So is the SD quality very much better that a "DV only" camera?

Thanks

The camera isn't released yet, so we'll have to wait and see.

Sorry, I was speaking of the 330 or 350 models.

The F330 and F350 both look very good either shooting SD or HD downconverted to SD. In theory your best option is too shoot HD, edit HD and downconvert to MPEG2 from the edit timeline. If you shoot NTSC SD DVCAM the chroma is sampled at 4:1:1 while MPEG for DVD is 4:2:0 so there is some loss in chroma detail, although it is barely noticeable. If you shoot PAL DVCAM then this problem does not arise as PAL DVCAM is 4:2:0.

What is your impression of the DV quality compared to a SD DV camera?

My concern is that the image quality of the SD will not be that much if any of an "upgrade" from my 1/2" chip SD cameras.

The HD will look great, but until Blu-Ray is a household name, DVD will remain my delivery vehicle.

Tim, since you're not that far away from me, I might be able to demonstrate the camera's capabilities first hand if you'd like to meet up sometime and do a side by side comparison of 1/2 SD vs. 1/2 HD shooting in SD. I suspect the dedicated SD camera will be a bit more sensitive to light because of the lower native pixel counts.

-gb-

Thanks a lot Greg!

You would really help me with an A-B comparison and a chance to see this cameras output..

I will P.M. you my info.

I'm sure Greg's offer is your best bet. Compared to a Sony DSR300 the F350 is quite a bit better. The F350 is the best 1/2 inch camcorder I have yet to come across. You should be aware as has been said that HD cameras are less sensitive than SD camcorders, normally by around one f stop.

It's not just the picture quality, it's the work flow, feature set and all the other nice little functions that for me take it to the next level.

Thanks for your opinion.

This is what I need to hear to entertain buying this camera.

The 300 series was the highest regarded 1/2" chip SD camera, so this is good news.