SD Cards in the Sony EX-1

This seems like some exciting bit of news. Apparently, folks have figured out how to shoot onto SanDisk SD cards with the Sony EX-1 and EX-3 cameras, instead of Sony's expensive SxS media.

The EX cameras are supposed to be great (see latest EX-3 review from Adam Wilt.). Excellent performance in terms of resolution and low-light sensitivity. Their 1/2" sensors work much better than the smaller 1/3" sensors in the Z1, Z5, Z7, HVX200, HPX170, and Canon cameras. The big problem for me with the EX cameras was shooting on the expensive SxS media. Like the Panasonic's P2 cards, these are much more expensive per GB than run-of-the-mill flash memory--e.g., $850 for 16GB of SxS Pro storage. It just wouldn't make sense when you are shooting a lot of stuff because the hassle of making sure all your footage was safe on hard drives all the time.

Well, this guy says you can use a 16GB SanDisk SD card for $60 that will do just about everything that Sony's $850 card will (the notable exception being over-cranking, used for slo-mo shots.) You just need a particular Kensington Expresscard adapter for $40 that you put in the camera.

It still doesn't make the the EX-1 ($6450 at B&H) a no-brainer for Link. That's still $60 to record about an hour at 35 Mb/s or 90 minutes at 25 Mb/s. The camera's more difficult to handle than the Z1 or Z5, or even Z7. Plus the Z5 has a 20x lens versus 14x lens for the EX cameras. And we are hardly ever delivering HD--so we usually downconvert in the deck, which is both a good and easy way to get SD footage from HD source material. If quality is what really counts, than the EX cameras are a real winner in the sub $10K range, but I think, but there are some significant drawbacks to the camera when compared to more practical, tape-based cameras like the Z5.

If you are seriously interested in this, then read the fine print here:
Overcoming the cost of SxS media: Introducing KxS.
Also, I don't know of anyone personally doing this. I would probably wait for some trustworthy sources to vouch for this before I committed to buying an EX camera.

UPDATE: Adam Wilt (a very trustworthy source) says that he's heard good things from Sony about working with off-the-shelf memory cards on the EX cameras in the comments section of this post on ProVideo Coalition.

I tried looking for the Kensington card reader, and it seems to be out-of-stock everywhere. Also read on a forum that it may have been discontinued. Not good news for this concept.

New Sony Memory Card Prosumer Camera

Sony looks like it has a great new camera on its hands for the prosumer market. The PMW-EX1 records to solid state memory--a new format called SxS Pro. Unlike P2, it looks like there will be multiple manufacturers, which means lower prices in the long run. The EX1 should be selling in November for around $7,500 with two 8GB memory cards included.

For editors, very confusing what this means right now. The recording format is based on the XDCAM format, which is recorded on blu-ray optical discs. But EX1 tweaks the formats--different file wrappper and the option for higher resolution, a full 1920x1080. The new XDCAM EX format is not fully supported by Final Cut, but there might be some native support if you shoot in the right way with this camera--not sure. Also the camera has a firewire port on it that says HDV. The camera doesn't record in HDV but can it transcode? Lots of questions.

This camera looks like a giant step up from the Z1 in just about every way. If you want the low-down there are already a few articles on the web from folks who have been testing pre-production models. Here's a good overview from FreshDV of what info is out there about the EX1. Here are two in-depth articles, one from Nigel Cooper and another from Simon Wyndham. There are so many interesting new features on this camera, it's worth getting a broad overview.

I'm still not sold on the tapeless workflow, but this looks a great camera. I'm just worried about backup for this footage. Sony offers a unit that transfers from the SxS Pro cards to Sony's XDCAM discs (with some drawbacks as Simon Wyndham points out.) Otherwise, it's archive like you do computer data--either optical disc burning or stacking up hard drives on your shelf.

Sony Announces sub-10K Tapeless Camcorder

Was it 3 years ago that Sony and Panasonic offered their divergent views on tapeless workflow? Sony touted the Blu-ray optical disc as cheap storage with high-capacity, but offered more expensive cameras. Panasonic's P2 cards were solid-state memory, which allowed a smaller-form factor and cheaper cameras, like the HVX200. But those P2 cards are still pricey, despite plummeting costs for flash memory.

Well, Panasonic isn't wavering from its commitment to P2 with a bunch of new high-end gear, like the AJ-HPX3000 and AJ-HPX500, and the low-end HVX200 is still popular. But Sony is trying out flash memory with a new camera, the XDCAM EX

This is a sub-$8,0000 camera that records onto a new type of flash memory called SxS. Sony will sell SxS, and SanDisk will also sell cards for the camera. It records in a lot of formats 1080 at 60i, 50i, and 24p, and 720 at 60p and 50p, as well as standard-def. The XCAM EX records with the MPEG-2 codec, but I'm not sure what kind of bit-rates. They mention 18mb/s, which is equivalent to HDV. So no indication yet that the quality will be an improvement on the HDV format (one nice thing about the HVX-200 is that it offers DVCProHD, which is a better codec than HDV.) Like the P2, you can get an overcrank effect for good slo-mos.

The XDCAM EX should come out in the fall. The SxS standard was just announced too. So no word on storage pricing. I'm guessing it will start high, like the P2 cards, but I'm hoping it will fall fast with flash giant SanDisk also manufacturing SxS cards.