[Alan Grattan]

Hi Robin,

Your not going to believe the hassle I’ve been having with Sony Prime Support. The were late by one week picking up the camera, supposedly due to courier error. I initially received a call from an engineer stating the chip block needed to be replaced, and I would have the camera back within a few days.

This was followed up a week days later with another call (after many messages demanding an explanation for the delay) from a different engineer stating that the chip block was not being replaced, and the camera was still receiving bench testing!

And today another call from the assistant manager stating that the camera had failed its final check and was due for more bench testing. After pressing him for an explanation, I was pretty much dismissed, and am still waiting a call back from the manager. He had no response to me when I explained the costs being incurred with camera hire.

I called the retailer from whom I purchased the camera and he is express couriering a replacement camera to me as I type. He too was shocked by Sonys treatment of this case…

I will keep you updated if you wish… bit of a mess and absolutely no confidence in with sony equipment or after sales…

[Alan Grattan]

hi Robin,
I received a call from a Sony engineer explaining the delay in me receiving back the camera. he told me that he is replacing the chip block and is awaiting the part. his English was poor enough but what I understud was he could not get the camera within spec using the preset white balances. I will report more when I recieve the camera back and hopefully along with a report. on the bright side, he also told me it was the first 500 he has recieved into service with a fault.
Alan

[Alan Grattan]

Hi Robin,

Very sorry for tardy response.. Since I last posted, the camera has gone back to Sony (under their Prime Support) for checking. I am still waiting on their reply.

I have tested the lens with other cameras, and had it checked out by a lens repair company, and can be 100 percent sure the lens is not the cause of the weird colours. I did read somewhere (cannot find that particular post now) that one of the ccds could have developed a leak, resulting in many errors, one being a colour shift.

I will be sure to revert when Sony have offered the results of their testing.

[Alan Grattan]

thanks for all the suggestions …
i have reset the camera on a many occasions as went wrong in my settings challange…. tried different lens and strangly got slghtly different results, one offering slightly less red cast but not natural enough… again my lack of knowledge and understanding leads me here… … what your suggesting re bluer pics is correct however preset on my 500 offers a slightly green cast!!! … I found this out to my utter horror on its maidan voyage a while back! if you not having an issue with preset 5600, it starting to sound that my camera needs its channels properly setup….

have just organized with another cameraman who reciently purchased a 500 to take it for a few hours today to double check settings … will let you know.

[Alan Grattan]

I have executed the auto black shading and it has not helped. I too have tried using the preset 5600 and while the preset 3200 is fine, the 5600 look terrible. I know the preset can be adjusted and am currently testing that. I was very used to using the digi betas 6300 preset .. it always produced exactly what your eye would see regardless of time of day temp changes. my lack of understanding of how shading works is not helping the situation, but from my limited research it involves using waveforms/vector scopes to adjust the cameras green/red/blue channels to compensate for different lens characteristics … I’m not sure if this is the answer but if not I may have as you suggested, a faulty camera! if I learn anymore, I will post details.

[Alan Grattan]

Hi sorry for tardy reply.

Just double checked the camera settings for that shoot and the camera was indeed set to standard gamma R709. I just dont have the time or expertise to be grading the pictures.
I have used hyper gammas before and they also have produce a slight red cast at times. The camera produced excellent images on interior shoots but seems to be very sensitive to exterior conditions.

I have read before that sonys need much tweaking before a “nice” picture can be produced.

I was shooting interviews when this issue arose and to be honest don’t use the cameras monitor for judging white balances. I have the audio levels displayed on that. Perhaps I should check it more often!!
That particular morning started of with gvs and there seemed to be a very slight red cast over all the pics. Later the same morning I shot a couple of interviews and the red cast was worse.
I did redo a white balance before the interviews.

re hyper gammas… I was filming today and used HG 3, and was much happier with the results. The strange thing is that I did nothing different… ie white balanced and shot away. I have shot on digibeta for years and never had this weird issue…

This is a helpful guide to hyoer gammas — https://www.sony.co.uk/biz/content/id/1219237429204/section/broadcast?articlesection=9

I was in email contact with a cameraman from the states re the pmw 500, and he did mention shading the camera to the lens as very important. I have looked this up on utube and yea it does make a lot of sense. I am looking for someone who can carry out this procedure for me here in Ireland. I would imagine that it may rectify the issue. I suppose I was looking for a quick fix!

Any other suggestions?

[Alan Grattan]

Hi All,

I know this is an old thread, but just wanted to re ask the question. Aside for the recording media aspect, is there any difference in the actual images from these cameras? Setting aside profiles etc, but lets say using one of the hypergammas. I read somewhere that the signal processing in the 500 is the same as the 350, which differs from the 700/f800 processing. (apparently nothing to do with 35 420 vs 50 mb 422 differences)

I am just about to make the decision to buy either a 500, 700 or f800. 99% of the work I do is in house so not concerned about handing over media etc. Image quality is paramount in this decision.

Many thanks Guys
Alan