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Shoot Review: Sony PMW-EX3

Oct 1, 2008 12:00 PM, Reviewer: D. W. Leitner

Growing the XDCAM family.

 Web Expanded
EX3 update

On first sighting Sony's PMW-EX3 last April at NAB, I blogged, “How could there be an EX3 when the PMW-EX1 debuted only a few months ago?” I called it an EX1 with interchangeable lenses and noted the “weird, oversized viewfinder cobbled together from the EX1's flip-out LCD and a sizable arrangement of viewing optics.” In my NAB wrap-up for this magazine, I dubbed it a “platypus,” that chimerical egg-laying mammal with the bill of a duck and tail of a beaver.

Those comments stand. It's virtually unprecedented for a manufacturer to release a follow-up product hard on the heels of the original, which highlights the fact that the EX3, despite a successive product number, is not a successor to the EX1 but rather its matched complement. In fact, had they been introduced in reverse order, this review might instead be touting the just-released EX1 as a compact, stripped-down version of the EX3 welcomed especially by documentary makers and those who slide slim camcorder cases into overhead bins while flying.

After all, the EX1 and EX3 are essentially the same camcorder. Same 1/2in. 3-CMOS imager with 1920x1080 pixels; same 1080i/p and 720p with 24p and 50Hz/60Hz field rates; same super-high-resolution LCD display; same twin S×S card slots. Even the EX3's supplied detachable lens, a dual-mechanism 14X Fujinon zoom (mechanical and electronic focus) with a true iris ring and rotating handgrip, is the same lens that comes fixed on the EX1. (See my first look of the EX1.)

Given use of the same lens, then, the EX1 and EX3 produce identical images. What has changed instead is morphology — the shape and external functionality of the EX3 compared to that of the EX1. Imagine an action-figure version of the EX1 unfolding like a Transformers toy, sprouting a duck's-tail rear end, a pop-out shoulder brace, a full-sized viewfinder, an external hard-disk recorder, and all manner of 1/2in. and 2/3in. zooms using a pair Fujinon lens adapters — you get the idea. Sound like fun?

Shape-wise, the EX3's obvious analogue is Canon's XL H1, which debuted three years ago offering a removable zoom lens, an LCD panel doubling as viewfinder by means of large viewing optics, and an elongated body in a “chainsaw” profile that ends in a shoulder brace. (The body/lens of the XL H1 measures 1in. longer than that of the EX1.) Of course the 1/3in., 3CCD (interlace, pixel shift) XL H1 records 1440×1080 to tape-based HDV; whereas, the 1/2in., 3-CMOS (progressive, 1920×1080) EX3 records full 1920×1080 to S×S flash cards.

These specs represent a world of difference in terms of performance, but what fascinates me is how these two companies coming from different directions arrived at the same place. Canon's design derives from its MiniDV XL1 and XL2 series from 1997, which in turn traces back to its interchangeable-lens L1 and L2 Hi8 camcorders, which were popular with embedded journalists in the first Gulf War. Sony's EX1 began as a Handycam with a flip-out LCD panel and rear viewfinder attached at the handle.

Clearly, not everyone preferred the EX1's 252,000-pixel color viewfinder over its larger 922,000-pixel LCD panel when it came to viewing and focusing a 2.2-megapixel image. Not that there's anything wrong with the EX1's viewfinder. When it's used in conjunction with 2X expanded focus and peaking (four flavors: white, red, yellow, or blue), I find it more than adequate to the task (although not as smooth and crisp as the Sony HVR-Z7U's sequential color LCoS viewfinder). But Sony recognized an opportunity to create a new, larger viewfinder based on the EX1's new, outstanding high-res LCD panel.

This entailed subtracting the rear view-finder and attaching a large viewfinder housing with conventional external controls (peaking, contrast, and brightness) to the operator side of the camcorder. This inevitably unbalanced the Handycam-like design of the EX1 (not renowned for its handheld balance in the first place), which in turn required distending the rear of the camcorder toward the shoulder for bracing, resulting in its new shape.

© 2009 Penton Media, Inc.