Richard Ladkani
Forum Replies Created
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Yes I tried that. But nothing works. No zoom no record.
And I checked the Remote with an LCD Photo cam There is a light shining. so the battery works.
What else could it be???https://www.richardladkani.com
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I might have found the cause of the problem. And it’s pretty serious that nobody picked up on it.
We are shooting right now with an EX3 in Rome and the backfoucs poblem became so severe we couldn’t continue shooting with it anymore. When zooming in and setting focus on a chart about 7ft away and then zooming out to wide angle the focus went soft. When turning the focus to about 3ft it became sharp again while in wide angle. Same problem on the fujinon wide angle. We redid the back foucs again and again with different size charts it stayed totally off. Then we drove to a rental house and compared our EX3 with a second EX3. SAME PROBLEM. The other EX3 was also off. The guys at the rental house couldn’t believe it. So we all tried to figure out the problem and finally found a possible SOLUTION.
The camera has a software bug. When setting the backfocus you have to FISRT reset Camera Data to factory settings. Then you run the backfocus and then it actually works. When we then did the back focus a second time WITHOUT resetting the cameras it was off again almost to an identical level on BOTH cameras. We then reset both cameras again did the backfoucs again and then it worked on BOTH cameras without problem.
We do hope we finally resolved this issue for good but I find it amazing that nobody picks up on it and complains. Doesn’t anybody check their backfocus?? It’s a reall sony bug that you have to reset camera data before performing the back focus. It’s not written in the manual, no sony technician told me about this although it’s crucial.
We do hope it’s resolved now. Will keep shooting throughout the week. If problems persist will let you know.
Best
Richardhttps://www.richardladkani.com
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Hi,
I tested Sony EX3 in split screens and intercut with a Sony F900R and the results are stunning. ONly in 720p Slowmo 60p mode will you see a softer image. In Full Res you see almost no difference. The limits of the EX3 only become visible when colorcorrecting shots that very over or under exposed.
Another problem we saw is when you have pans across high detail areas with lots of contrast like a forest. The compression of the EX3 can’t handle it and the image starts to shutter pretty badly. We had this problem when shooting steadycam in the jugle after it rained and the sun came out. The images were hardly usable. The F900 worked fine.
The EX3 is amazing though for low light shots. Much better than the F900R. We actually used the EX3 for candlelight or open fire shots instead of the F900 because the F900 saw nothing when the EX3 still gave a decent image. There was also no noise in these shots. We watched all this footage on a baselight 2k Projector on a 8m (24ft) long screen.Also very careful to turn the shutter ON to 1/50 below the lens. It’s often forgotten.
Good luck
Richardhttps://www.richardladkani.com
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I checked this problem on two standard lenses and the wide angle and always got exactly the same off backfocus. And then I checked with a different EX3 at the Sony Center and got the same off focus. Very strange that a replacement lens fixed your problem. Our realization was that it must be a flaw with all EX3 cameras. That’s why they forwarded the problem to Sony Japan. But they never reacted. So I turned to this forum to see who else has a backfocus problem…and see what can be done.
https://www.richardladkani.com
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Hi all,
The lens is not the problem. I checked with two different standard lenses and also with the wideangle lens rom Fujinon. And I checked all three lenses on two different EX3 cameras. I checked all that at the Sony Center Munich together with 3 technicians from Sony. We got the same problem an all lenses and both cameras.
Here is what we saw and how we tested:
You set everything to manual and open the iris to wide open. Then zoom in on a siemens chart about 7 feet away. Focus the chart then slowly zoom out and check what happens with the siemens chart. It will go out of focus ever so slightly and reach its worst out of focus when totally wide. Then you switch to pixel to pixel on an HD monitor. Best a 17″ model. You will see a slightly blurred siemens chart. When you now start dialing the focus ring on the camera towards 3 feet you will see the chart get sharper. It was sharpest between 3-4 feet. We repeated this test at least 15 times and then also checked it through an electronic device that reads sharpness and contrast and looks like a waveform. This is what finally confirmed the problem for Sony to be a Backfoucs problem of the camera not the lens.
Remember the lens aperture has to be wide open the distance to the chart about 7 feet and of course everything set to manual.
Also I want to stop this badmouthing Sony. The team in Munich was fantastic. Only the Sony support in London didn’t want to listen and didn’t want to cooperate. They just did there standard tests and didn’t want to test the camera the way I did. So they never saw the problem.
If any body out there could repeat my test and tell me what they saw it would be great.
I do have a hunch where the problem originates:
I think it has something to do with how you set up lighting, distance of the chart and what else is visible in the frame when you run the “Adjust Backfoucs” in the camera. We got slightly different degrees of the problem when we changed all the above. But this would be a hue problem because I usually have to adjust backfocus whenever I change the lens in the field which could be anywhere and is certainly not a lab or a studio environment.All the best
Richardhttps://www.richardladkani.com
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Hi,
I was asked to clarify this thread at the top.
The problem has been solved. There is no Long Gop Issue or motion blur problem. The shutter of the camera was turned OFF which means it was at 1/25th. When turned on to 1/50th all problems are solved. Fact is: YOu have to turn on the shutter manually when shooting 25p! Very important.
Best wishes
Richardhttps://www.richardladkani.com
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The motion blur was due to the fact that the shutter was turned OFF. When on later tests the shutter was ON at 1/50th of a second everything was fine.
Best
Richardhttps://www.richardladkani.com
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Hi
I am pretty sure you are playing your footage back on a computer when you see the jumps, correct? If that is the case than your computer cannot play back Full HD in real time or doesn’t have the codec installed properly. Try playing back the footage on your camera and see if you get the same jumps. If yes then there is a problem with your camera if not it’s your computer.
Good luck
Richardhttps://www.richardladkani.com
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Hi
I did a lot of tests with all Panasonic and Sony Cameras and the EX1 has the best slowmotion to offer. It’s clean sharp and beautiful to watch. The image quality is almost that of the F900R and much better than the HVX201 which I also tested. It feels more like 75f/s than 60frames.
The Long Gop is of no concern anymore. The reason it came up in this thread was because I forgot to turn the Shutter ON on my first test. When OFF the image looks terribly smeary and soft. I thought it was a Long Gop problem but it wasn’t. When ON it looks great and sharp. The usual setup should be 1/50 but if you have very fast moving objects you might try 1/100. Just be careful when shooting people. They can look overly sharp and unnatural if you go above 1/50th.
Good luck
Richardhttps://www.richardladkani.com
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HI Nick
have you read my last comment on the thread EX1 vs. Z7
I noticed that my shutter was set to 1/25 or set to OFF in 25p mode.
Did you try it with the shutter on?
It looks much better.https://www.richardladkani.com