[David Ice]

I didn’t try pulling the memory battery. I did notice that if I put the camera into “playback” mode (power switch to the right) the reboots stopped, and the camera would at least (temporarily) function, both in playback and record mode. The camera has firmware v1.25.

I did send it in yesterday for servicing. The feeling was that it was an intermittent controller board issue.

[David Ice]

I have been routinely backing up my EX files (both edited and raw footage) to blu ray discs. It works perfectly BUT you must use the XDCAM EX clip browser to make the file. In other words, if a project has a total of, say, 40gb of data, I would split it between two 25gb single layer BD-R. I would tell the EX browser to copy and make two folders. Each folder would hold about 20gb each of data.

By archiving things this way all the metadata is still there, and it’s very easy to just pull things back off the blu ray disc if need be.

I find this perfect for archiving (in the EX format) a final show. It’s easier than using tape or the expense of a separate hard drive. And it’s easy to pull a clip off when the inevitable happens…”Can you give us that moment when….” two years later.

[David Ice]

Hi Paul,

I did discover that on the Picture Profile setting, I had somehow nudged the exposure compensation up to +1….how I’ll never know. I put it back to -.5, and it seemed to help.

BUT….I just got my camera back from Sony. I realized a month ago that, to my horror, the auto iris was only sporadically working. In other words, you powered on the camera, and it would work for 30-60 seconds. Then it seemed to freeze, and no matter how the lighting changed or what I panned to, it would be locked. Sony had to totally replace the lens…fortunately under warranty.

So check to see if your iris does automatically work after an extended period of time. In my case, it was easy to miss and deceiving….if I changed the gain control immediately after powering up, it compensated. If I was fiddling around with stuff and changed the gain later, it would not compensate. And some shots (i.e. filming a play or a show) would suddenly and suspiciously be over or under exposed–because the auto iris froze up.

[David Ice]

Thanks guys for the feedback. I would swear I saw a demo video showing exactly this same thing…filming lightning strikes “after the fact” but perhaps it was too much Metamucil that morning…..to quote David Letterman!