IEC-Sony Seminar: three camcorders, an answer to every need

The director and director of photography, Álvaro Bernal, has been in charge of coordinating a seminar organized by Video IEC and Sony in which numerous professionals have been able to put their doubts about formats, media and workflows on the table and test three of the brand's latest camcorders: the new HXR-NX5 with which Sony launches the new NXCAM family as well as the XDCAM EX, PMW-350 shoulder-mounted and PMW-EX1R handheld.

Video IEC has organized this Thursday the 11th in the new Sony Style space on Serrano Street in Madrid, an interesting seminar focused on three of the latest Sony camcorder proposals. The HXR-NX5 with which Sony launches the new NXCAM family as well as the XDCAM EX, shoulder-mounted PMW-350 and handheld PMW-EX1R have been the three protagonists of this meeting between professionals. The filmmaker and photography director Álvaro Bernal has been in charge of presenting these camcorders and he has done it in a simply… masterful way.

Starting from a 100% user point of view and with an approach, as incredible as it may seem, purely agnostic in terms of brands, Bernal has exchanged his experience with the professionals present, without hesitation when it comes to giving his personal opinion on formats or brands, whether Sony or not. Attendees have been explaining what their needs were with respect to their workflow, both from the point of view of ingestion, operations, editing or storage... with Álvaro Bernal taking charge of presenting his vision supported by his long career in numerous fields of production.

In this seminar there was a lot of discussion about formats, tapes or files... proving that there are valid alternatives for all tastes, although one conclusion seems to be evident: working today with PAL SD equipment means being out of the market and that is that high definition is unquestionable in production. Bernal has advised that whatever the output of the material, even for SD broadcast on television, he always recommends capturing and post-producing in HD, finally passing, if necessary, to standard, as the only guarantee of maintaining the value of a production today and tomorrow.

HXR-NX5

Due to its novelty, since it has been on the market since the beginning of this year, the new HXR-NX5, the first camcorder that implements the professional version of AVCHD, thus expanding the possibilities of the equipment in a professional environment, attracted great attention.

This camcorder records Full HD images of 1920 x 1080 pixels at 24 Mbps (50i or 25p), as well as in 720/50p and SD formats. Its G Lens optics (with a 29.5 mm wide angle) and the Exmor technology of its three 1/3” sensors offer magnificent response in resolution, color and contrast with high sensitivity in poorly lit environments.

In addition, it offers maximum operational flexibility, as it allows the generated content to be recorded on affordable and easily available memory cards. With two 32 GB cards, the new NX5 can record six hours of HD material, which can be extended indefinitely by changing cards, even 'hot' during recording. It also offers hybrid HD and/or SD recording via a unique 128GB Flash memory drive that provides 11 hours of HD recording at 24Mbps.

In terms of audio, the first camcorder in the NXCAM family offers two audio recording formats: Dolby Stereo or Linear PCM Stereo, the latter capable of recording uncompressed sound with CD quality.

XDCAM EX

Those professionals who attended this seminar organized by Video IEC and Sony, and who usually work in broadcast and high-level production environments, focused their interest on the XDCAM EX PMW-350 and PMW-EX1R camcorders, which among other possibilities allow for the first time to record in DVCAM standard definition. With these new camcorders, Sony has expanded solid state production to new applications and quality levels offering high flexibility and the ergonomics typical of the XDCAM EX. At this meeting held at the Sony Style in Madrid, it was clear that there are no longer any excuses on the part of those broadcasters who were reluctant to abandon tape because they had their flow established on DVCAM since they can now work with both the new XDCAM EX camcorders and the XDCAM on professional disc without abandoning the popular DVCAM format and with full support from the majority of non-linear editing systems.

Specifically, the PMW-350 uses three 2/3-inch Exmor CMOS sensors with a resolution of 1920x1080. What is striking about this camera is the possibility of recording in DVCAM via CBK-DV01 in studio configuration with time code input and output, genlock input, and HD-SDI and HDMI outputs. One of the main advantages of the new camcorder is its low center of gravity and its light weight, providing great stability.

As for the PMW-EX1R, it is considered the successor to the PMW-EX1, being the first memory-based professional camcorder that records DVCAM in SD (DV-AVI type 2 wrapper) with HDMI output, high-resolution viewfinder and push-button automatic iris.

Among other equipment that has been shown in full performance at this seminar, the Sony LMD 1751 monitor and the PXU-MS240 'handheld' recorder also stand out, Sony's first backup unit for SxS PRO that offers an ultra-fast write transfer speed of up to 600 Mbps, managing to transfer 32 GB of footage in just 10 minutes.