Nigel Cooper
Forum Replies Created
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F350 = superior 2″ 16:9 viewfinder, HD/SDI output for Broadcast applications, Over/Undercrank will ALWAYS yield better results than mere frame duplication in post, 5-pin audio out connector, 22 x BNC timecode I/O connectors. Basically, professional broadcast features.
I always said the F330 is more for corporate/weddings etc where guys will be plugging the camera straight into a TV and the F350 is for broadcast were the HD/SDI output is a must. They both produce the same image quality of course, just one has professional features.
Personally I preferred the better viewfinder and I do a lot of Overcrank, which is far better than crappy slo-mo in Final Cut, which simply replicates frames to give the illusion of slo-mo, but never really looks any good.
Oh, and it is finished in “Professional Black” as opposed to “Wedding Silver” 😉
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XDCAM is already an accepted format; it’s been around for 4 years not remember. The entire New Zealand broadcast sector has replaced its Beta SP gear with XDCAM and it is already established in many parts of Europe and the USA of course. It is Sony’s most popular new format and is selling better than DVCAM did when it was launched. Apparently Sony are only managing to manufacture 10 F350’s per day in Japan, but global orders are 5 times this figure, Sony can’t make them quick enough. They are setting up new production lines to cope with the demand; it is simply flying now.
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Quite right, out of the box is not amazing and can be improved upon.
If you just want to get going and want a better starting point try:
Cine4 (more latitude and better knee than default, doesn’t blow out highs).
Switch on Hi-Sat to kick in more punch to colours.
Depending on your taste, reduce sharpness setting to -10.Though latter can be left at default zero if you are happy with it.
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Good points Redflag. If you can’t get your money back and make on it within 3 years you should be hiring kit instead; especially as this is tape.
No doubt HDCAM will continue in rental houses for many many years to come. But watch out for next generation of XDCAM HD, it’s going to be mind-blowing.
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None whatsoever, lens has nothing to do with it. That is a very poor quality lens for XDCAM HD though, try Fujinon XS17.5.5 instead, it is a thousand times better. Your camera is totally waisted with that SD lens.
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IF Sony announce 2/3rd XDCAM HD at NAB it WILL be approximately
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330 and 350 are the same in low-light i.e. the same as HDCAM and most other high end HD camcorders. I’m afraid this is the nature of HD. So many more pixels crammed into a small CCD block; something has got to give.
In SD land there are 720×480 pixels, in HD land there are 1920×1080 (or 1440×1080) and this means all those extra pixels struggle slightly to absorb the light hence they need more light to work.
The lens won’t make any difference, but I can tell you now that the lens you are using is not showing the camera to its optimum; it is a poor lens you have there and the camera is simply wasted with a cheap SD lens like that. My guess is a Sony Z1 would produce better images than you would ever get with that lens stuck on the front of such a great work of art e.g. the F330. Try the Fujinon XS17.5.5BRM instead, still cheap (by HD standards), but a really superb lens that is about 100 times sharper than what you are using.
Panasonic get around the low-light issue by using 960 x 540 CCD chips (basically standard def ones) and using so-called pixel-shifting technology to up-res them. According to Panny, this yields better results in low-light as well as great HD images; not sure about that personally. From what I’ve seen, the low light is only a quarter of a stop better than HDCAM/XDCAM HD, not the 2 stops that the Panny blurb would have you believe. Also, it is a known fact that pixel-shifting softens the image.
Personally I’d rather the slightly questionable low-light capabilities of proper HD camera that yield superior HD images all the time; not soft ones.
Perhaps 2 years from now, Sony and/or Panasonic, JVC perhaps will come out with CCD blocks that work perfectly for filming bats in coal-mines with +46db kicked in, until then, this is just one of the banes of HD as it continues to evolve.
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Angel, feel free to drop me an email, click on my Profile above and send me message via my web site with your contact number, I’ll give you a call and give you the full SP on this.
Personally, I’ve just today taken delivery of an F350 and in a few days I expect to take delivery of a Fujinon XS17x5.5BRM lens, which has just been dropped massively in price in the UK to around
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Angel, I know the chap you are talking about and there are just too many factors to really go into here.
Two important factors that did not help him are:
1. Terrible cheap SD lens.
2. Used out of the box with no menu tweaking or proper setting up (especially via service menu).There are many things you can do in service menu to crush out noise, but at the moment there is a trick (secret) to accessing them, but firmware will bring them back into the regular menus soon. I’ve had great success at this.
There is a downloadable PDF on Sony’s site giving tips on many different shooting/camera set up techniques, one such tip is the one called “Issue 07: Tips for Shooting Without Coarsening Dark Areas of an Image”.
See this link:
There are others such as issue 09 too, these will help a lot.
However, one thing you must remember is that the noise issues with +3db or more gain is the bane of HD, even Panasonic cameras suffer from this.
With the Z1 there are factors that people just don’t understand. On the face of it, you can be forgiven for thinking that the noise is less than XDCAM HD, but there are serious trade-offs. You lose definition for starters and you’ll get edge blocking in areas where dark and light areas verge, or edges merge; this is just the beginning. You can set up the F350 to do this, but personally I prefer a tad of grain with +3db in, as opposed to all the junk the Z1 brings to the party as a compromise.
Finally, larger CCD blocks with loads more pixels = less light absorbency i.e. a bit more noise. You get this with HDCAM and Varicam models too, not just XDCAM HD. Personally I am quite happy to be overwhelmed by those massive/huge HD 1920×1080 super HD images for a little noise when I switch in the gain. Also, you get noise in SD camcorders, you just don’t notice it because the SD (720s576) resolution is a lot lower, so it is hidden away in the softness of SD land.
One piece of advice, try-before-you-buy, but you really do have to set the camera up and use decent glass; for me, Fujinon are ahead of Canon.
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I’ve owned a HVX200 and have been using an F350 a lot recently. The F350 is head and shoulders above the HVX200 in image quality etc, but this is not a fair comparison as the HVX200 is a consumer camera; not a professional full-size model.
However, the P2 workflow (on any full-size cam too) is a total nightmare from my experience and I personally am pretty sure it won’t be around 3 years from now.
XDCAM HD just gets better and better, there are going to be some great things coming up with this format in the very near future.
For me the image quality from the F350 suggest that of a much higher priced camcorder.
I thought long and hard between Sony and various other makers, but I always come back to XDCAM HD, I’m blown away with the F350. For the money it is totally unbeatable.
Oh, you don’t need a deck either, use the camera for drag-and-drop type file transfer.
From my (very brief) P2 days, I can also tell you that XDCAM HD .mxf files will ingest into the computer faster than P2 cards will. Sony are soon announcing a USB XDCAM HD disc reader/writer with two read/right heads that will make ingest of files super fast. Each head can read/right at faster than 100Mbps. 65 minutes of HQ HD footage brought into computer in about 5 minutes; cost around $3,000