Hi Butch,

You and I have talked about this before. It would help if we knew the kind of budget you're working with.

Call me if you want to chat.

BTW .. Happy New Year

Tom

We purchased the SONY AX2000 about 9 months ago and love the camera. I have always purchased Sony equipment. My old Sony's were dependable, workhorse cameras. I love this new camera. The quality is great, it records on 32 gb SD cards and you can record upto 6 hours in high quality 1080i HD.

I cannot think of a better camera than the Sony EX1r. We've got three EX1s in rental and they have been rock solid and the image quality is pretty darn good too. One of our EX1s survived a shower in a car wash and if it hadn't been for the idiots leaving the footage on the cards we'd never had known what happened to the camera.

We're making good use of the Chinese 90 watt hour batteries that also give you a D-Tap power outlet to run a 12V on camera light such as the Comer 1800. For your use you might prefer to stick to the genuine Sony SxS cards however we've had zero issues with the MxM SDHC adaptors with 32GB SDHC cards in them.

If you want better chroma sampling then Convergent Design's NanoFlash is the go. Highly recommend you get a camera plate from Westside AV, the only issue the EX1 really has is the tripod attachment plate. Olaf's plate can be had with a "wing" that'll give you a mount for either the Nano and/or a wireless receiver.

If you've got deeper pockets then a PMW 350 in the fleet would be good. The stock lens is OK but ours mostly gets used with better glass so allow another $20K+ for a good lens or two. Again this is a rock solid camera. Ours survived a tour of duty on the front line in Afghanistan. Our EX1s have been up mountains, to Antartica and in jungles. I've had my EX1 in record for around 9 hours in direct sunlight at an event and it never missed a beat, more than could be said for me. The SxS media really makes a difference, the cards are a decent size so they're harder to loose. Personally I'd avoid any camera that uses SDHC cards directly. Those cards are too small and fiddly for the duress of event work.

Bob.

I'm inclined to agree. I've done quite a bit of event work and a film on the EX1. For the same money today, there's no other camera I'd buy instead.

Bob's point about SxS is well taken, but I do use SxS inside a carrier the size of an SxS card, and I've been happy with them for 2 years now.

I read the earlier post about the HMC150 being good in low light. I'd disagree with that after reading DOZENS of accounts of owners who were far less than satisfied with their event results. The HMC150 only has one card slot and for event work, sometimes that's just NOT good enough,

The EX1 probably has the best in-camera audio of anything anywhere near it's price point. And with real 10bit HDSDI out, you can attach some pretty significant off-board recorders. The new Canon XF300 is also formidable, but it's unproven at this point.

I'll put it this way, if you gave me $10k to buy a camera and do $100k shoot, the EX1 would be my top choice. Period.

That 2 megapixel (ex1) camcorder is way out of date and a waste of money.

Excuse me...? Care to elaborate?

I second the Sony AX2000, had mine for a little over 6 months and simply love it....

Jay,
don't feed the trolls.

Bob.

Sorry, Bob, I don't know what got into me.

Hi Butch,

put me down as another Sony EX1R fan. I've had mine less than two months but in that time I have established that it is very robust (I live in an area where ambient temperatures regularly exceed 40 degrees Celcius in the daytime), has excellent low-light performance, has a myriad of off-the-shelf accessories available for it, has a very easy workflow and has a staggering picture quality.

I use mine with a nanoFlash when I need 4.2.2 colour space, but even the standard 4.2.0 looks really good. Although I mostly use the camera tripod mounted, I have purchased a shoulder brace from West Side AV. This brace converts the camera to a nice, light shoulder mounted rig.

One good thing about this camera is the ready availability of Picture Profiles (on DVinfo.net) which help you store and recall up to six different profiles at the push of a button. The EX1R can be manual everything or auto everything, or whatever you want in between. The best thing is the price. I have regularly read reviews which state that you would expect to find the features that the EX1R has on cameras costing $5000 more.

Cheers

Russ

Another wonderful thing about the EX1 (as well as cameras like the Z7 and 270) is that you can put the footage right on the timeline without any transcoding or expanding into an intermediary codec. This means that you can use things like internal laptop drives or off the shelf USB 2 micro drives and have plenty of space and throughput while still maintaining stunningly good quality video.

I just picked up a Sony NX5u for $3,899 through B&H Photo and it's quite impressive for the price. It has 1/3" chips instead of the EX1R's 1/2" chips, but it performs nearly as well in low light as my old PD150 which was legendary for it's low light capabilities.

as tom pointed out in the 2nd post; what's your budget?

and, what's your work flow / do you archive / etc.,

and yes, the ex1 appears to be a great camera, but not if you need tape.

The NX5u and the AX2000 are very simular in what they do. I purchased my AX2000 for $3,195 on Sony's website. It was a special going on, so I don't know if you can still get one for that price.

Have had excellent results with the Panasonic HPX-170...P2 cards are pricey, but very substantial and reliable. If you do cinematic work, Panasonic has just introduced a
poor man's Red One.....uses interchangeable lenses to eliminate the need for a DOF adapter...uses AVC encoding and cheap memory....

Until the P2 card usability issues are solved by SONY, I'd not recommend that option to Butch. They're a long-time Vegas shop.
Tom

I read the earlier post about the HMC150 being good in low light. I'd disagree with that after reading DOZENS of accounts of owners who were far less than satisfied with their event results.

You are incorrect about the HMC-150 low light. The low-light performance of the HMC-150 is equal to or better than all cameras in it's class. It is also equal to or slightly better than the EX-1 in low light.

As far as what camera to buy, get the latest HD version at your budget price point of whatever brand you are currently using. The controls and video look/adjustment are usually similar in a same brand camera and saves on the learning curve.

First, thank you for all of the input.

We're seriously looking at the Sony EX1's. I have one question. Could someone elaborate on the "direct to Vegas timeline" feature. How is this different from other cameras?

Thanks

EX1s don't use tape - so no real-time capture needed.
Tom

Thanks Tom!

Something about the phrasing made me think I was missing something (which I'm prone to do)!

I Hope you're keeping warm this winter! Unfortunately for us, the warm and sunny southland hasn't been so "warm and sunny" so far.

Thanks for your and everyones help!

Thanks Butch...

Hasn't been too bad so far. Couple of inches on the ground, but the temps have been right on seasonal - a couple of degrees C below.

Glad we could help you out. If you'd like to discuss further, offer is still there.

Cheers,
Tom