Discovery Chanel approves Sony XDCAM HD PDW-700 in Gold band
To Be honest I was surprised when it (Sony PDW-700) was originally banded in Silver , while HDCAM was in Gold.
We’ll never really get to know what changed but the banding of XDCAM HD422 (The PDW-700) for Discovery HD has shifted from Silver to Gold.
The PDW- F350, PDW-F355 and PMW-EX1/EX-3 are all in Silver which makes sense since they are 1/2″ sensors, but the PDW-700 is 2/3″ and 50mb/s and 4:2:2
HDCAM was approved for Gold but not the PDW-700?
For those of you who aren’t aware, HDCAM acquires at 1920×1080 off the block but squeezes down to 1440×1080 on to tape using a 3:1:1 colour space. XDCAM HD 422 acquires 1920×1080 off the block and the file is a 1920×1080 4:2:2 on disc. So it’s better on 2 counts already!
Interestingly, many people I speak to are still very loyal to ‘tape’ and compare everything to HDCAM. We did a side by side the other day and the 2 stops extra sensitivity of the PDW-700 was blinding obvious. The PDW-700 was also much punchier. But you can always soften an image by turning down the detail (or even switching it off) and using filters to soften the pictures if you feel the pictures are too sharp!
It’d be interesting to do a ’shoot out’ between Tape and disc and see what looks better.
I look forward to someone doing this and reporting the results, any takers?
Anyway it’s great news for all owners of the Sony PDW-700 now that Discovery have approved the camera in Gold.
- Den
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