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More stuttering zoom stories….
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I haven’t tried it yet myself, but I would expect that if you put on a “broadcast” lens that feathers in and out smoothly and can make clean slow moves, than it should work that way on the front of the EX3. A major problem of course is that the lens would cost as much or more than the camera itself.
Rick
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The question would be if the issue is the lens or the lens interface on the EX3. If the issue is with EX3 communication itself the lens may not make a difference.
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That’s an interersting point. It’s either a very scary thought or it could mean that a firmware update could rectify the problem. Personally, my gut feeling is that the problem entirely lies with the lens itself. It’s very cheap and Sony will openly tell you that.
Rick
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If you put a different kind of lens on there it works fine. You’re bringing a different servo along with it. However we took the lens off the floor model at Abel (which works fine) and put it on one of our malfunctioning cameras and the problem stayed with the camera.
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So it seems the lens camera combination that comes with the EX3 “kit” is on the edge of the tolerances. Probably enough variance on the camera or the lens may result in a working/non working (stutter) zoom. It does mean that some cameras can handle the lens a bit better than others. Does Abel have any cameras close in serial number to the floor model?
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No, Abel’s floor model is a bit older I think. Just about all North American stock was cleared out in early summer and Sony resupplied everyone in early July. I’d love to be able to find out when the next batch ships.
We asked if we could buy Abel’s floor model.
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My stock lens shutters at low speed as well. I sent it back to Sony and they determined it was operating within their expectations. At NAB last April I brought it up with both Sony and the Fujinon rep. He basically said “What do you expect from a prosumer lens”. (Guess I expected it to work.) In fact on display in the Fujinon booth was the wide angle fuji and it had the same stutter. My solution was an expensive one; buying the fuji BERM lens. It really fixes the problem and I still use the stock lens for steadicam, jib and letus 35 work where I don’t need to zoom. But I gotta say I’m totally disapointed with both Sony and Fuji on this problem and I will never buy another fujinon lens (bought the BERM before NAB) and will think twice about Sony in the future (although I love the XDCAM resolution and format).
Bob Wojda
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that sounds very much like our experience, Bob. i hadn’t posted a follow up just because by the time we finished dealing with this i was pretty fed up. it was very disappointing to buy a malfunctioning camera and be told “tough sh!t.”
i forget just how many cameras we exchanged, 3 or 4?, but on the last one we took it in to Abel to exchange it within the allotted 2 weeks. when we got there they asked that we try the repair route again. even though we didn’t really expect a different result, we were open to whatever might move things along. the folks at Abel indicated that if sony didn’t come through on the repair we would still be able to exchange the camera.
that turned out to be a bit of a “gotchya.” they were tired of dealing with us and said they couldn’t do an exchange as we’d had the camera too long. they threw us a bone though. they let us swap for their floor model, which had quite a few hours on it from sitting in the show room, but the zoom works fairly well. better than any of the other ones that we’d purchased and exchanged. which is to say, it isn’t perfect, but it’s usable in a manner the others obviously were not.
buyer beware.
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