Just in the process of putting together a new website as I’ve had the pleasure of a few quiet days after the busiest couple of months in quite a while. As such, things here will be looking a little half baked for the next week or so while I slowly re configure the content and start refilling the pages. Thanks for your patience 
OK – you can buy one now. US$80K for a basic but functional kit. Double that for some good lenses. Bargain! I’m looking forward to taking one for a spin.
Well, we’re still waiting on the mystery wifi adapters. Apparently they’re in the country in stock. But my sony dealer at least has not had a chance to get it working. Could it all be a dream? Still I was on a shoot yesterday watching the poor production assistant trying to keep up with logging all the detail required. good takes, bad takes, scene reference and the rest and thought to myself how much easier could this all be on location and then in post should this system actually work! We wait with baited breath.
The XDCam wifi live logging upgrade will be available in Australia by around the end of May. This includes the software upgrade and the wifi adapter.
Well the news is that the upcoming XDCam Wifi upgrade for the PDWF800 and PDW700 is pretty good. It’ll allow live logging of clips where meta data can be written from a remote computer back to disk in camera. It’ll also transmit a proxy resolution live image. At the moment it’ll only work with the Windows PDZ-1 software. BUT I’m told Sony has started work on an interface that will run on smart phones (iPhone included). In addition Sony it is reworking all it’s logging software – which is well overdue. As useful as the PDZ-1 software is, it has some significant design and user interface issues. In addition, there is no facility for meta tag editing on the mac platform, which given how many creatives live in the mac world, it kinda alienates a huge section of the market. The new software is due out around the northern hemisphere Autumn.
Photographic companies of German origin are coming back in force with a range of new lenses to suit various sectors of the emerging 35mm digital cinematography market. The latest, Schneider, is about to launch a lens series they call Schneider Cine Xenar. The first release due out in the next month with feature a 25, 35, 50, 75 and 95mm primes. They’re all around T2.0-2.2 and you’ll be able to pick up the set for around US$21000. Now that’s a competitive price for a cine lens kit, so it’ll be interesting to see their quality. PL mount will be standard, but you can specify Nikon and Canon mounts.
Good news. The new XDCam transfer version 2.12 for Final Cut Pro has finally sorted out the problems with snow leopard. We loaded it up onto a couple of systems this week and all the issues appear to have been resolved. The news now is that Sony is working on a whole totally new rework to be released the northern hemisphere Autumn. This will combine XDCam Pro disk and EX management software into one system. With a bit of luck it will also bring some of the features of the PDZ1 software for Windows to the mac platform. AND windows users may well be blessed with much more refinemed version of this powerful, but relatively poorly designed software.
I had hoped Arri’s new Alexa camera camera might come in at a price point a little less than the 50000 euro base Arri has announced at NAB. Especially when you consider the cost of a Red package. None the less, the images that are coming out of this tough looking little bugger are looking very fine indeed. The decision to support native pro res recording to SxS as well as Arri Raw is an exciting one.
Now I’m left wondering whether the significantly lower recording resolutions when compared to those planned by Red would frustrate me. Or will the picture quality be more succulent, it’s low light performance shine like nothing seen before etc etc etc and thus make it all worthwhile. And the maximum frame rate will be 60fps, slow when again compared to what RED has in the pipeline. Never the less I can’t wait to try one. Exciting times for 2010 and 2011.
The new XDCAM PDWF800 and PDW700 1.63 firmware has been released. I’ve loaded it onto my PDWF800 and all appears AOK. It mostly seems to have networking and FTP enhancements (are we freelancers working in the long form world ever gunna use all that????). BUT it does now allow clip names to be displayed in the viewfinder. Now that has proven useful. Also live logging and wifi features are supported, but that’ll be an optional upgrade listed by Sony US at US$990 for the software and something like US$600 for the wi fi transmitter. Still, if it works as Sony is promising, it’ll be a fab feature. I’ll be testing it out as soon as I can get my hot little hands on it. In the mean time, get the 1.63 firmware here: https://servicesplus.us.sony.biz/sony-software.aspx
Sony has released an updated version of the PDWU1 utility software which contains a new firmware package for the PDWU1 drive. The software supports snow leopard and amongst other things Sony says it gives “greater USB stablity” when transferring data. While that means little to me at a technical level, at a practical level I have noticed a significant improvement in the rate at which data is read and written to the drive. Now that’s something to smile about