Sony PMW-EX1 vs Panasonic HVX-200 Shootout footage online

[Shawn Miller]

Perhaps it’s less of a “fear issue” as much as not “hanging out” on a particular forum on a regular basis. 🙂 I’m sure your video is stunning, but I could’nt see it, I got a black frame and a QT control bar. Do you have that footage posted in another format?

Thanks,

Shawn

[Craig Seeman]

I was being facetious when I said fear.

You need Quicktime 7 (7.3 or 7.3.1 is best) to view the video. It’s an H.264 encode.

Go here
https://www.apple.com/downloads/
and click on the Quicktime logo and it will direct you to the Mac or Windows version depending on your OS.

It may be that you have to wait for the video to buffer. It’s 1500kbps data rate and even that doesn’t do the detail justice. The clip is under 2 minutes long so it shouldn’t take too long even if you’re on a slow DSL line.

[Shawn Miller]

“I was being facetious when I said fear.”

I know – I wasn’t exactly serious either. Apologies if I seemed less than playful. 🙂

BTW – I did see your footage from another machine. It looked good… I’m anxious to see even more variable framerate “stuff” from the EX.

Thanks,

Shawn

[Craig Seeman]

Keep in mind one of the things both the HVX200 and the EX1 do have in common is undercrank/overcrank. I shot at 720p60 in 720p24. The interesting things was having the shallow DOF the 1/2″ chips provided. You can see on the close-up of the faces on the carousel, they go from soft to sharp to soft again as they pass through the “sweet” spot. There’s also no rolling shutter skewing that might have been evident, had it existed, on the polls. The other self test was the skaters. I shot that zoomed in and hand held and had no problem holding the EX1 steady for some time.

[Pat Mcgowan]

I understand Matt. The problem is that more than one response on this thread has commented on the superior detail in the Sony image compared to the (slightly soft focused) Panny. To my eye, this is even apparent in the test chart grab but I could be wrong.

The Sony EX-1 looks very cool and it’s great to see 1/2″ sesnsors in a camera of this class.

We used the HVX200 on a project last year and liked the images quite a bit. Our main camera is the HDX900 which we love. We are looking for a compact camera to complement it.

[Barry Green]

[Matt Devino] “looks about 3 stops more sensitive”

THREE STOPS? Forgive me for doing a spit-take here, but — three stops? I just spent a couple of days with both of these cameras side by side, and I did have a waveform monitor and a vectorscope and my DSC charts, etc., and sensitivity is one test that I ran. When both cameras were configured to deliver a fundamentally identical image (i.e., comparable gamma, comparable color rendition, both in 1080/24p mode, both in 180-degree shutter) the EX1 was more sensitive — by 1/2 of one stop. 0.5 stops. Not three stops! One half of one stop.

Granted it is more sensitive, but not by the Paul Bunyan-sized tales that are being spread about it. It is much cleaner in noise though. If you push the EX1 to 6dB, it’s about as noisy as the HVX is, so if you want a noise-to-noise sensitivity comparison I could see claiming 1.5 stops. But three stops is just… not realistic.

[Barry Green]

[Don Greening] “The workflow is pretty simple, actually”

Well, here I’d disagree — I think the HVX, workflow wise, blows the EX1 into the weeds. So many annoying little things about the EX1’s SxS implementation… it’s like they didn’t figure out all the things that make tapeless so cool. They totally missed the boat on that. I’ve been using an HVX for a couple of years so I’m very familiar with how people work with this, and the SxS system is extremely limiting in so many ways.

For example: on the HVX you can jump from camera mode to playback mode in about 2 seconds, maybe less. Pop over, play back a clip, review footage, pop back to camera mode, all effortlessly. On the EX1, it takes 14 seconds. Think about that for a second — or, better yet, count it out. Count out 14 seconds. That’s how long it takes before the camera reboots and you can play a clip back. You could play back footage faster in a tape-based camera!

Okay, another thing — on an HVX, if you’re in playback mode and some action starts that you need to catch, you just press the “record” button — the camera automatically toggles back to camera mode and starts recording, all within about two seconds. On the EX1, it won’t do that. You have to actually push the power switch through “off” and over to “camera” mode, and then you have to wait about 11 seconds while it boots up, and then press record. Sorry, by that time your shot is *gone*. Or, actually, it can get worse — let’s say that you think you’re done shooting so you push the switch over to playback mode, and three seconds later you realize “oh crud — I need to be shooting!” Push the switch back to camera mode, and wait for 25 seconds! Because it has to fully finish booting up in playback mode, even though you’ve already moved to camera mode! And once it finishes that 14-second process, then you have to wait while it re-boots itself into camera mode. This isn’t the kind of thing that’s going to show up on a res chart, but it’s the kind of thing that’s going to make you want to drop-kick it like a football when you’re waiting close to 30 seconds before you can roll!

Tapeless should be about instant access. Not only in shooting, not only in playback, but also in post. I use Sony Vegas, version 7.0 on my laptop, using Raylight and I also tried it on an FCP system. On the Windows system with Vegas/Raylight or Premiere Pro, I take an HVX P2 card, plug it in, and edit the footage instantly. The SxS system made me go through a file conversion “export” process before I could drag the files into Vegas. Why? Don’t know; maybe that’s fixed in Vegas 8. On FCP we had to go through two steps, there was the Export to MXF and then there was a second process that had to be run, I think it was some manner of clip importer (I’m not an FCP guy, but when I use FCP I drag the MXF files right to the timeline using Raylight).

The EX1 had some definite bonuses; the manual focus was nice, but as a practical matter it really wasn’t any more effective than the HVX’s, and the manual zoom was fundamentally identical. The iris ring was a nice touch though, as was the colored peaking and the sharper LCD. But it had some big negatives too; the rolling shutter artifacting was pretty bad, it’s impossible to use handheld unless you can devote two hands to it, it has a nice sharp picture until you start moving and then the res drops dramatically (watch all your nice colored peaking just disappear whenever you move — it’s because you lose hundreds of lines of resolution whenever the system is moving, and that’s *not* due to the codec, I’m talking about the live uncompressed output here!)

All in all, the EX1 does have reasons to justify its higher price tag. It has that “looking through a window” high-def look that the HVX doesn’t quite have. It’s sharper and clearer with less noise, and it is (splitting the difference) about a stop more sensitive. And it has a 10-bit HD-SDI output port. But the workflow sucks eggs, actually working with the unit was irritating because it was so slow, and the rolling shutter ruins shots (weddings? press conferences? red-carpet events? I wouldn’t trust it). P2 blows away SxS. There’s no metadata! There’s no clip information at all, other than a shot marker. Heck, we had shot markers on tape! I dunno, I shy away from crass words, but the only term I can think of that appropriately describes the EX1/SxS approach to solid state memory recording is “half-assed.” They left a lot on the table.

If you need crystal-clear imagery with that looking-through-a-window HD “look”, and you’re not going to get screwed over by the rolling shutter, then yes the EX1 offers a lot at a modest price premium (about 30% more expensive). But I think the workflow and usability of the HVX is much better than the EX1.

[Barry Green]

[Pat McGowan] “I understand Matt. The problem is that more than one response on this thread has commented on the superior detail in the Sony image compared to the (slightly soft focused) Panny. To my eye, this is even apparent in the test chart grab but I could be wrong.”

I wouldn’t argue that at all, the EX1 can deliver a noticeably sharper image especially on a static shot. In 720p mode they’re very comparable, in 1080 mode the EX1 pulls significantly ahead in terms of sharpness — as long as the camera isn’t moving. In motion the resolution drops off a lot, and they end up being about the same on a pan. I don’t understand the exact reasons why this happens (although I have my suspicions) but it’s not something I’d blame on MPEG-2; it happens on the live output. In fact, it happens on the cam’s own LCD — go to 100% wide angle, turn on peaking (especially in yellow) and shoot some trees, etc. You should see a sea of yellow peaking. Now pan side to side, and all your peaking disappears until you stop moving. That doesn’t happen on an HVX or, well, any other camera I can think of, but it happens on the Sony.

My theory is that they’re doing some aggressive noise reduction algorithms, averaging frames together to bring the noise down, and moving the camera averages out that fine detail. It results in great-looking static shots but the shots go softer in motion. (btw, this actually helps the MPEG encoding, so I’m not saying it’s a bad design decision, but just be aware that the super-sharp frame grabs you’re going to see from this camera don’t necessarily translate into super-sharp motion footage).

But yes, it’s sharper and clearer than the HVX; the grain level looks to equate out to the HVX at about 6db to 9db. Note though, adding gain really sucks out your resolution on the EX1, probably for the same noise-averaging reason. At 18dB it’s a snowstorm (as you’d expect, and as is fair for any camera at 18dB) but also all the fine detail disappears. This also affects the recording. 6dB is fine, looks like an HVX at 0dB. 9dB is fine too. 12dB might be pushing it, and 18dB is right out.

[Barry Green]

EDIT: I just remembered — how are you supposed to even use a mattebox with this thing? The LCD/mic sticks out over the top of the lens by about two inches! Remove the lens shade and look at it — what are you going to do? I’ve owned a CAVision, Chrosziel, and currently have a Vocas (aka Century) mattebox and I know for sure the Vocas won’t work — you can’t even physically move the mattebox in to mate to the lens, the mic/LCD sticks out so massively far. How would you use filters? Sure, the EX1 makes sharp images, but… you can’t handhold it, you can’t use conventional matteboxes, you can’t quickly check footage… sorry, they missed the boat on a lot of things. Overall I found it frustrating.

[Mariusz Cichon]

Hi,

I actually find EX1 and FCP workflow easier than HVX. In EX1 case transfer is faster and there is no need to convert to QT because camera records in that format so FCP just need to unwrap file that take few seconds for whatever lenght clip. SxS card goes straight into my laptop and any other new laptop. Client can download free software to watch clips.
I have Chrosziel mattebox with 4×4 and 4×5 trays with rods support that I used on HVX and now by using different step down ring I can mount it upside down and use filters on EX1. Works fine for me.
I agree that going back and forth between playback mode and record mode takes time but you can set camera return button so it will playback your last clip instantly without switching to playback mode.
There is always something about each camera that not everybody will like. I do not like that it does not have 56000K preset switch. Otherwise it is great medium size semi-professional camera.