HD Expo video show
The HD Expo in Burbank, CA is small compared to the typical show but this one has some notable exceptions. (The other show I like to go to in the LA area is Cine Gear however it happens at the exact time as Califur and this year I wanted to attend Califur, 1st time, so I missed Cine Gear which made going to HD Expo more of a priority than usual.) There were two things I wanted to check out at this show. Waveform monitors below $2,000 and new cameras from Sony. I am still waiting on the monitors at least till NAB 2011 and hopefully then something will break the 2k barrier. I was really impressed with the PMW-500 camera from Sony. This bad boy records on memory cards in either FAT or UDF with the latter being able to be transfered to Sony optical disk directly without transcoding for archiving if desired. The transfer from the express cards is very quick. (800 to 1200 Mbps interface speed) This camera uses 3 2/3" CCD sensors, 2.2 million pixels each, giving reasonably shallow depth of field and really good sensitivity with very low noise. I checked out the noise using the evaluation monitor that Sony had setup at the booth. The gain selection ranges from -6 db to 42db, the latter called turbo gain. I was able to put the gain up to 6db with no noticable noise in the image. At 9bd there was noise in the blacks but real hard to see. At 12 db the noise in the blacks was noticable, barely noticable in the white areas but a very usable image. I wish my 1/2" sensors looked like this which is why 2/3" are preferred. The camera also has 15 seconds of cache recording so one could frame up a sleeping tiger and using the cache simply wait for the tiger to wake up and yawn knowing that as soon as record starts the previous 15 seconds is in the shot. Real sweet. The viewfinder that I would like to use as well as some other options will not be available till March next year when the firmware that supports these options is realeased. The camera also supports the Sony digital dual channel wireless audio plugin modules right in the rear of the camera.
The show was smaller than last year with seemingly fewer attendees but all in all it was a good show and definatly worth going to.
The show was smaller than last year with seemingly fewer attendees but all in all it was a good show and definatly worth going to.