Did anybody noticed the strong distortion of the blue channel at the edge of frame on the FX1? I have done some tests with my MF DOF adapter and I concluded that blue channel blur doesn’t come from the attached lens, but from sony lens itself.

You can simple test it, if you put camera vertically and make a simple test image with black lines and just put that paper on the front of the camera (detach matte box first). You will notice a noticeable blur at the edge of the image, and this blur comes only because messed blue channel (R/G are ok). Setup: all on auto, zoom at 4.5. I used test image dimensions 6×4 cm.

Can someone try this test with his FX1 and additionally with cinevate achromat attached?

Test can be seen at http://www.mulingal.com/fx1catest.jpg

If there is a particular school or course you can suggest for beginners to get to the level you are at I would greatly appreciate it.
It sounds cliche, but in my opinion the best school out there is the school of hard knocks. Until you use gear in production, it’s all theory and numbers…Kendal and I can both attest to this. That’s when all the bugs come out and stuff starts breaking. I kinda feel the same way about film school…the best knowledge is that gleaned on set from professionals who are willing to share. That’s why we do things like the First AC tutorial series with Bob Sanchez. Expect more content like that in the future as we go forward.

Plus I also think readers would like to know more about you and Kendal. You guys have these incredible articles and informative videos, but it would be awesome if you could tell us how you got started in this, the types of cameras you have personally used and what is the driving force behind the amazing Freshdv.
As you probably know, you can get a little flavor for where we are and what we use by listening to the podcasts, watching the tutorials, etc. Look for everything else to be revealed in the 25-year anniversary VH1 “Behind The Blog” special… :-)

Look at the Canon HV20. Have you ever seen footage from this small camera.It’ ridiculous how pin-sharp the images are.
Sure, but it falls apart in low-light. And you sacrifice a LOT of manual image controls (see this article for some workarounds). Both make the camera a non-option for my professional work. I would buy it in an instant for personal and family use though (and may very soon).

Doesn’t the EX with it’s half inch chips and native resolution of 1920X1080 provide superior images?
The EX1 is full-raster, the Z7U is pixel-shifted. So the EX1 delivers a sharper image, or so initial reports seem to show. If you are looking for full-raster and sharper, the EX1 excels. That’s not to say that the Z7U isn’t perfectly fine for a many applications, and possibly even on par with the EX1 at SD resolutions (assuming high-quality downconversion in post, blah blah blah).

Is there any one camera that you personally would love to own if a million bucks were dropped into your lap.
Like Kendal, I think the F23 might be one of the best HD options now without turning to CMOS…but it’s prohibitively expensive and the HDCAM SR workflow is ridiculously expensive and a bit cumbersome. Even if I personally had a million dollars to spend on a dream camera system, I’d still be willing to sacrifice a little compression for size/convenience and workflow ease. As long as we’re dreaming, I’d like the EX1 controls and features, but with CCD imagers and packed into the Z7U form-factor. Oh, and in addition to the 1/3 interchangeable lenses, a native Nikon lens mount without a zoom factor. Tack on a as-yet-not-developed affordable Cineform recorder to the HD-SDI port for greenscreen and high-end applications and you’d sell a trillion of ‘em. Alas, I doubt we’ll ever see such a system.

-Matt Jeppsen

All things considered for MY NEEDS and requirements, I would rate the EX1 as like a 4 out of 5. I’d like to give it a 5 in the “under $10K” category of cameras, but rolling shutter skew and the strobe issue are problematic for me. And as you noted, it’s like the handheld ergonomics were an afterthought. I could live with the funky buttons and placement, but that offset handle is an issue. Frankly, for MY NEEDS the Z7U is probably a better camera than the EX1…for my needs it looks like the Z7U will end up being a 4.5 of 5. Odd, isn’t it? That the simple-featureset model may be more useful to me personally than the top of the line Cinealta. I do wish it had 35mb VBR though…

The bottom line is that we believe user’s needs are so varied that it would be shortsighted to slap a numeric rating on something as complex as the EX1. With tools like 35mm adapters and specific accessories you can sorta define how MOST users will be utilizing them, and therefore it’s less problematic to provide number ratings. It’s a little dicey on cameras though.

-Matt Jeppsen

After reading this I felt I should add a few comments on the Sony cameras. The FX1, ZR1, and now the EX1 are our largest challenges with regard to close focus spherical aberration and macro ablitiites. You can confirm this basically by framing and focussing on a 24×36 target with no adapter in place, bare cam, and note the difficulty in getting consistent focus across the target. The HV20, XH-A1, and HVX200 on the other hand, have much sharper images edge to edge “bare” and this translates to better adapter performance too. In fact, with the flip in place the XH-A1 is pushing 650 lines at the corners (using the Ambi2 and 1200 line rear illuminated DSC chart). Your observation that the flip consistently improves images is true for every camera tested, but unfortunately it can’t address these variations in macro performance as well as we’d like. Now if we could get Sony to address this issues….