Just went through some extensive hands-on with the new Sony PMW350, the latest EX family offering. I will post some pics of our experience shortly. First, many thanks to Kari Hess of Abel Cine Tech for providing the freelancers of the area a chance to look under the hood. It was a good turnout at the home offices of fellow freelancer Matt Mayes, and he hooked up his Sony F900 CineAlta next to the new 350. I plugged in my EX1, thinking this could be disappointing for my small camera.
I’ll go more in-depth in another post, but overall impressions were a definite agreement of the 7 of us, we liked the shoulder design. Done. There were no 20-something video jockeys in attendance, so us old guys like the fact our backs weren’t strained. The glass on the front makes it tip a bit, but a nice feel and light weight were appreciated.
Most of our time was devoted to fiddling with switches and menu offerings, getting our bearings on the myriad of options. Nothing too scary. When we put the cameras in the Panasonic 17″ HD monitor, we weren’t surprised that it delivered a quality image. The F900, being older, much pricier technology didn’t offer anything more than the 350 to our eyes. The little EX1 surprisingly looked nearly a match for the 350. It was a touch disappointing that the larger imager in the 350 didn’t produce the jaw dropping depth of field difference I was expecting. You could tell the difference between the two in our backyard subtropical DoF test, but it was subtle. I’m sure in different conditions you could create something more noticeable.
The consensus was this will be a fine field camera and will make a wide variety of clients happy. Good price point, and those of us already familiar with the EX1/3 workflow like the digital format. The others are convinced that tape is well into it’s twilight and regard the EX media as just another format to embrace, if begrudgingly.
More later.
