Leonard,

I'm not sure what photo you're referring to, but my understanding is that the PMW-F3 has no internal microphone, and does not include a specific mic for use in the included microphone cradle.

I suppose if you used a long shotgun mic and a short wide lens, it could be in the frame, but I haven't had my hands on the camera yet.

I guess what I saw was a photo showing a mic in the mic holder but I didn't know it wasn't built in. I guess if you just worked with a short mic and moved it out of the way when sliding filters in and out you would be OK.

From page 124 of the camera manual:

No signal is fed out from the SDI OUT connector when “SDI/HDMI/i.LINK I/O Select” of the VIDEO SET menu is at any setting other than “HD SDI” or “SD SDI,” enabling the HDMI OUT connector and the i.LINK (HDV/DV) connector.

From another forum;

" Bandpro in Burbank just received a production model of the F3 today. They were testing the outputs with the Cineroid EVF and to everyone's dismay, they discovered that the F3 does output both HDMI and HD-SDI simultaneously....BUT ONLY when it is recording and outputting 59.94"

My experience with pre production cameras is that it is rare to have major changes between pre production and production. Once again this holds true.

Had an F3 for testing and HDMI and SDI not working simultaneously.
So i guess the atomos ninja is out of question for now as i need both on-camera monitoring and client monitoring.
Will check if the Ki-pro mini has two HD-SDI outs.

It would be good for someone well placed with a Sony Marketing or Production Manager to put the question to them. This is a major consideration for a lot of people. There are only a couple of 3rd party EVFs available and I do not know of any that are HD-SDI based. Of course there is the option of an external HD-SDI based monitor or channeling the signal through a nanoFlash but those solutions will be small comfort to many who want to make a shoulder rig out of the F3.

I know this isn't optimal - but you could use an AJA Hi5 HD-SDI to HDMI converter.

They're about $500, and offer both an HDMI output, and a loop through for the HD-SDI.

So... you could go HD-SDI out of the camera, then split the signal, feed both the EVF and a client monitor.

I don't know the technicalities of the converter - so I'm not sure you'd want to use it for HDMI recording (ie, Atomos Ninja), but seems like a valid monitoring option.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/478471-REG/AJA_HI5_Hi5_HD_SDI_SDI_to_HDMI.html

The upcoming Redrock EVF is supposed to have hdmi pass through. No telling when it will ship.

Just came from the Sony SR memory event in Toronto. There is an update on the firmware that allows both HDMI and SDI at the same time. Actually, it also gives you an option to separate the dual link and have a clean 1.5G to record to a Nano, the main SDI that you can have TC in etc from the LCD, and the HDMI as well.

That sounds like excellent news. Is that an official firmware? When will it be released?

I had a production version of the F3 for the last couple of days and it didn't have this firmware yet. I think its pretty new. So hopefully we will be able to get it soon

Nigel, excellent news. Any useful information that came out of the SR Memory presentation other than what you just stated? Looking for obvious things like the pricing on the dual-link firmware upgrade, SR memory and SR recorder costs and other technical improvements that will be rolled out when the recorder/firmware hits the market.

-Andrew

Andrew

They didn't mention pricing of the upgrades, but when asked about the recorder for the
F3, it was suggested that it would be lower than the price of the F3. The example of memory was a 32G SxS is $1000 (ish) and a 1T of the new Sony SR memory would possibly be less than the price per gig of the SxS which was around 4x. Basically, they didn't want to say, but you can get the idea.

They did mention that there would be 256 and 500 gig type memory. This new memory looked very impressive. They showed it recording from SR tape and simultaneously playing back with constant speed of 5G speeds. They said the future tapeless would be based off this new technology.

Thanks Nigel for the info and your efforts. Hoping the memory will be cheaper than they are suggesting.

Sony will be riding a fine line trying to undercut a usable RED package to a certain extent and be mindful of the surprise entrants into the marketplace that will occur around NAB.

If mindshare shifts away from Sony this could put a lot of downward pressure on their pricing model. Right now they have pretty much have the field to themselves in this price range. This could easily change in the next couple of months.