[Denis O’keefe]

Hi Peter, I’ve used all my lenses from 20mm to 180 successfully, and I’m looking for a 300 2.8
I’m don’t think there is a problem going with anything wider, if the image overs the groundglass you should be in business.

[Denis O’keefe]

In our case it wasn’t that the shoot was just over an hour, but we were using five cameras. We did six hours over two days so keeping track of everything could not get out of hand for a minute. One smart move I made was to have a dedicated data wrangler onboard.
All the aggravation in the field paid off a dozen times in the edit; ingesting the footage was a breeze. We synced with an old fashioned clap since we had a mix of EX-1 and EX 3 cameras.
Good luck on your shoot!

[Denis O’keefe]

We just did a similar job, and handled it similarly to Don’s reply above. Things can get confusing with a bunch of cards flying around so we ended up using removable color stickers to keep things in order.
Each camera’s card was numbered (1-5) and had its own color, then each card was sequentially marked 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B, etc.
That way if we had 1H and no 2H we knew we were cooked.
We started out with Shotput but abandoned it after the first transfer; it seemed to complicate things. As Don said, it is pretty simple and fast to drag the BPAV file to the hard drive ( we used two drives for instant backup).
One time we tried using usb 2.0 drives, we won’t do that again…way too slow.

[Denis O’keefe]

Daniel, sounds like a real mystery – when I looked at the footage after your second note I could see the wobble you’re talking about; subtle, but definitely there. It seems strange, neither the car or the camera seem to be moving too quickly.
You might be doing us all a favor by sending the bpav files to Sony for a diagnosis.
If you hear anything or do get to the bottom of the issue please let us know what’s up.

[Denis O’keefe]

I just looked at the yellow mustang too, I too must be missing something. Was the camera on a tripod or mount of some kind? It looks like the view through my nikon d-70 with the vibration reduction lens not set up right.
The video looks right, its appears to be the shot that is dancing around.

[Denis O’keefe]

Wouldn’t you be better off using firewire to import the XDcam disc files directly, then use the HD SDI to write back to the disc when necessary. At the least that would eliminate having to change cables, as well as some unnecessary conversion going into fcp.

[Denis O’keefe]

Both the EX-1 and the EX-3 are great cameras, and both are awful ( but differently awful) for any extended handheld work.
There are a number of mounts and grips available but none really get the job done….yet. Hopefully more will be developed as the camera becomes more common.
I cobbled together a baseplate, shoulder mount from another camera and an anton bauer brick for power and balance, so far it works great, but needs some refinement.
But the cameras are so good I say just find a way to work around the grip issues.

[Denis O’keefe]

I went through the same issue and got it done in a few steps.
First I went through the steps on the card in the camera ( I don’t have it in front of me but it involved hitting the “Store” button in the menu. Apparently that created an EX-3 SUF file on the card.
I then opened the sxs card on the computer, and copied my EX-1 SUF data into the EX-3 SUF file.

Its under the SONY menu that appears under BPAV – about five or six steps down.
Now when I switch cards back and forth I have the same PP data in either camera.

[Denis O’keefe]

Hi Craig, I tell them too – along with “ten hours is portal to portal”, “even if we did eat yesterday, we still need a meal break today”, “a bathroom break isn’t really optional”, etc etc etc.

[Denis O’keefe]

This may be a long shot, but are you wearing a blackberry while shooting? We’ve been battling the clicks that come with them for years, trying to get producers to stop using them during interviews, etc.
I use an iphone now, and either turn it off or get it pretty far away from the camera while working.
The betacams were metal and had professional shielding; even then the clicks and chirps came through. I suspect the plastic cases on the smaller cameras make it all the more susceptable to outside interference.