PRE-PRODUCTION - SONY EX TEST

One of the camera options that I've got for the documentary is the Sony PMW-EX1R XDCAM EX (Sony EX for short). These are the standard cameras for TV Production and we've been using them since our first year of University. I've worked with these cameras many times before and I'm confident with them. While testing the camera there were 3 main things I needed from it:

- Colourful and high quality footage
- Useable with my Rig
- Able to change the look for interviews (E.g. Zoom in and blur background)

When testing, I first started by trying to connect the camera to my rig. This caused issues straight away, first of all the matt box couldn't be connected to the rig without losing the access to the focus and zoom ring, although the camera does come with it's own matt box connected to the camera so this wasn't a complete put off by the camera.


I connected the rest of the rig together and then found that with the cage around the camera (added for extra support and to add on a external screen and microphone) and found that I couldn't connect the follow focus properly or use the camera LCD screen with the braces around the rig. All this together took me well over an hour to set up and ideally I wanted this to only take 10-15 minutes at most so that set up could be nice and easy for the shoot. 

Although I found that the camera doesn't work with the rig, there is a Fig-rig available through the Tech Store for me to use instead so I went on to test the operating and quality of the footage with this camera:

As you can see from the footage, the colour quality isn't as colourful as what I would like, although this could be fixed in post I'm aiming to have a camera which can get footage that requires very little grading in terms of colour. Also, I can't achieve the blurred background that I want for the interviews and also the footage does become rather grainy, after speaking to Fergus (technical tutor) he explained that the cameras are over 8 years old so the sensors have been used over and over every year so they are becoming worn out. However it is possible to change this and get high quality footage out of them. However, they aren't good in Low light conditions and this will become an issue as I'll be filming the performance and will require a camera which works well in low light.

Decision: No to this camera.