New PMW-350, EX1R & media reviewed

Sony's first memory-based shoulder-mount camcorder with all-new 2/3inch Exmor CMOS sensors, an upgraded EX1R with native DVCAM recording, plus new media options impress freelance cameraman Alister Chapman.

Frame grab from PMW-350

When you combine the pin sharp images, the lack of noise or grain, the organic colours and the lack of chromatic aberration what you end up with is remarkable pictures that take your breath away. This camera is good. Very good. And that’s not just my opinion. Producer and editor Steve Connor has produced many airshow programmes and has seen HD footage from Duxford for many years. He too thought that this was some of the best quality footage he has ever seen. Once again the 35Mb/s XDCAM EX codec does an excellent job with no visible artefacts, it’s hard to believe looking at the pictures that the recorded images are 4:2:0 and not 4:2:2. Of course if you want 4:2:2 you can take the uncompressed HD-SDI output and record that using a NanoFlash or other external recorder.

If you are currently shooting with a full size SD camcorder the PMW-350 would be an excellent step towards the future. It can shoot both HD and SD (SD is a paid-for upgrade option). The SD pictures are extremely good and the solid state workflow is incredibly fast with offload speeds around 6 to 8 times real time. When you need HD you have a camera capable of producing pictures that are about as good as they can get. As there are no moving parts there is little to no maintenance to worry about, combine that with the low power consumption and the cost of ownership gets about as low as it can get. This really is a very good camcorder.