Thanks to the professionals at Midtown Video, FreshDV has an XDCAM EX1 camcorder in hand for a few days. We are shooting with DSC Labs test patterns and performing a variety of camera tests. We’ll also be using the camera with two hot 35mm adapters…the Letus Extreme and the brand new Cinevate Brevis Flip module.

My question to FreshDV readers is, what exactly are you interested in learning about the EX1 and the adapters?
Please post in the comments below or e-mail me (Matt) directly with questions and comments. Thanks, and stay tuned for our findings!
(UPDATE BELOW)

UPDATE: Many thanks to EVERYONE for all the great ideas. Between the comments here and the flood of e-mails I got, I have plenty of questions to address. What an inquisitive crowd! :-) I’m posting my rough list of topics to address here, these are created from or copy/pasted from comments and e-mails I’ve received. You’ll note that I can’t test the generic SSD ExpressCards because I can’t seem to find them locally (unless Best Buy or Circuit City is carrying them and I don’t know about it). Also, I have no greenscreen material on hand, so ideas would be appreciated. Here’s the working list. Some of these have already been tested, I just don’t have time to update it yet.

—–OUTDOOR DAY—–
- Over crank and undercrank?
- Glass quality, check for CA etc?
- Breathing on the focus?
- Codec test, fast motion macroblocking in shadows plus other typical problematic areas for compression (reds)
- Speed controls. I would like to actually see it at work.
- How it handles moving leaves in trees
- Whether the power zoom truly feathers up and down,
- Does the new style of lens feel like a pro fuji lens in its focusing and irising.

- CMOS Torture - Check for vertical skew (warping telephone poles), aim at sun, jiggle, etc.
- I would like to ask a very comprehensive series of tests on how effective the compression algorythm is and how it affects image quality. Usually, people test only the CMOS quality and forget that it is going to be recorded in a lossy codec.

- I have a idea for the EX1 test based on how the 35mm adapters respond
to the slow motion function on the camera. I have found in the past
with the Varicam that you sometimes get interference when shooting
slow motion with a 35mm adapter that uses a moving ground glass. It
doesn’t always happen but in certain circumstances you get phasing,
artifacts or increased grain. Does it make a difference shooting
interlaced or progressive, are some frame rates better or worse than
others, do different adapters respond in a different way, does it
make a difference at different resolutions?

—–OUTDOOR NIGHT—–
- S/N, and gain clean? not clean? How good how bad how ugly?
- Low light. Compared to other cameras. Street lights, car interiors and such are useful to me.
- I would like to see some low-light footage with the stock lens at whatever settings in the camera might be used for dramatic filmmaking. Bonus points if you can include HVX200 stock lens footage of the same scene for comparison. I’m interested specifically in the visibility and patterns of noise.
- Can it handle fast moving and action scene at low light?
- LOW LIGHT! Hoes does this handle low light compared to HVX200?
- Can you please test the camera in low light condition (dark rooms, dark esteriors) with and without 35mm adapters

—–INDOOR/CHARTS—–
- Glass quality, check for CA etc?
- Dynamic range what is it?
- Can you try and rate the ISO natively of the camera?
- Menu structure, how deep can I go what is tweak-able what is not…?
- Workflow problems….
- Res test and tonal reproduction, how faithfully does the camera reproduce the colors of the chart…
- Peaking, and focus assist features,?
- Everybody keeps talking about how ergonomically bad it is, what do they mean? Can someone explain this.
- I would love to see images of how Sony’s browser software works and also how the express card loads in the finder.
- Audio, because it is has no tape deck, it must be pretty quiet. Can you do something on the audio? How solid is it?
- XDCAM as a codec, i have a lot of questions here, largely because I have never worked with it. How does it compare to HDV or DVCProHD or DV? Multi-screen editing, color correction, exporting. nd how its workflow in FCP pro is, given the long-gop format.
- On the dynamic range, after calibrating to a 18% gray chip, see not only the dynamic range, but note how many stops under and over it will take–seeing if it’s uniformly sensitive in both the high and low end.
- Please flash the lens with a camera flash a few times and see what it does and see if you can see any image rolling or other such problems.
- Also, how small can the DOF be?

—–Cannot Test—–
- Use non-SXS cards. I have heard it does work.
- Greenscreen with SDI and in camera. How big is the difference?
- How the does the 4:2:0 color sampling of the EX-1 perform when you try to pull a green screen key in 1080p?
- Can it take 3rd party solid disks?
-GREEN SCREEN CAPABILITY. SO many people want cheap cameras for green screening and and to resort to HDV or this new XDCAM. but the 4:2:0 might be troublesome. Is it?

—–OPINION—–
- How does it feel in hand?
- accessibility of manual controls
- I would like to know how does it hold up against HVX200 in term of footage manipulation and color correction in FC2, or other similar programs.
- Why does this have the “CineAlta” stamp on it?
- form factor and balance…etc…