[Michael Palmer]

If you invented peanut butter and your neighbor invented jelly, why would you give your peanut butter to his customers?

It is a marketing deal that you will hate but have to deal with.

Good Luck
Michael Palmer

[Michael Palmer]

I remember needing to open the Sony PP file and renaming EX1 to EX3 so you might need to explore both Sony PP files

Good Luck
Michael Palmer

[Michael Palmer]

Libec makes a very good zoom control, I also found that the small handle zoom works really well and you can sett a speed in the menu.

Good Luck
Michael Palmer

[Michael Palmer]

I’m not sure if you can use the SD adapter system on the 350 or not but if you can you really should consider redundant recording. SD cards are cheap insurance if you ever forget you have the camera features display on and the Nano is recording it over your interview. Note… always use an external monitor from the Nano to see what you are recording. I have owned 2 Nano’s from it’s beginning, they are bullet proof and I have never had an issue. I like pressing the camera record button over the Nano record button. Believe me you will sleep much better having a second copy of your work.

Also there are plenty of good LED on board lights available and some even have a dimmer knob feature.

Good Luck
Michael Palmer

[Michael Palmer]

I have the Anton Bauer battery adapter for my EX3 and I just velcro my Nano on to the larger AB battery, its nice to know I have redundant recording as well, worth every penny IMHO.

Good Luck
Michael Palmer

[Michael Palmer]

Bill,
The Samuri would be a great way to compress your video as it uses the 10-Bit color pallet and at 50 Mbps it will move the color space from 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 and this is much more information that will go into your digital recording file. It would be better to up the bit rate to at least 100Mbps Long GOP or 220 Mbps I-Frame.

Michael,
The Ex1/3 cameras only come with 35bps 4:2:0 compression and there is no upgrade that I know of available to improve them, not that it couldn’t be fixed with a firmware update, Sony’s marketing plan has newer replacement models that use this same encoder. Convergent Design uses the same Sony Mpeg-2
(8 Bit) encoder in their Nano Flash, the only difference is CD opens the encoder for the end user to set the bit rate and compression scheme for either Intra or Inter frame compression, and as you increase the bit rate to 100 Mbps (amount of bits that will be saved) you can choose either all I-frame or Long GOP compression. Hope this helps

Good Luck
Michael Palmer

[Michael Palmer]

I totally agree that redundant recording is very important and you should just to be safe. Most of the recorders can be triggered by timecode so you just need to hit the record button on the camera to start the recording on the external recorder.

Good Luck
Michael Palmer

[Michael Palmer]

1. Can you record to both the SXS and ext. recorder (for redundancy and possible for use as offline edit)?
YES
2. Any preference between BMD Hyperlink Shuttle 2 and Ninja 2?
The BM is far less money to purchase but it doesn’t have a monitor, I like that the BM can have a 512 gig SSD for longer record times.
3. Any words of caution or advice?
Make sure the port you are using for the external recorder is being monitored with just a clean signal, and that the display information you would see in an EVF is turned OFF. Also the small SDI connectors on the BM can easily break, make sure you rig this devise so that the cables are secure on the unit and you will be fine. You will need to purchase cables to convert small SDI to the size on the F3. The cables that I found were very ridged and after a day of run and gun jumping into a car 4 times they loosened this small SDI connector to the point I had to stop and take it all apart and glue it back together. The BM is much larger than I had expected, however I found very affordable Samsung 512 gig SSD’s for about #300 each that gave me 4.5 hours of S-Log / Pro Rez
4. With the BMD shuttle, can I review the footage that’s on the SSD drive, while it’s attached to the camera? Is it as simple as putting the camera in VTR mode and hitting PLAY on the Shuttle?
YES it will play back.

Good Luck
Michael Palmer

[Michael Palmer]

It seems like you need to convert the HDSDI to HDMI for your monitor, these are both digital signals unlike the component/composite ports.

https://www.atvresearch.com/HAWK-SDI-HDMI.aspx

Good Luck
Michael Palmer

[Michael Palmer]

There is Slog as a part of ver1.45 firmware and you can use Slog but its limited. I have the key for sale if interested

Good Luck
Michael Palmer