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Sony PVM-740 OLED Monitor. Like looking through a window!

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Sony PVM-740

Sony PVM-740 OLED monitor

One of the things that really caught my eye at NAB was Sony’s new PVM-740 field monitor. This is one of the first professional monitors to use OLED technology (Organic Light Emitting Diode). Traditional LCD screens work by using a backlight that has a liquid crystal panel in front of it. When a charge is applied to the liquid crystals they change the polarisation of the light passing through them, this light then passes through a second polariser and between them they vary the amount of light passing through the panel to the viewer (If you have ever seen a VariND filter or tried twisting one polarising filter relative to another you can see how this works). While on the whole this works reasonably well there are some issues with this technology. The first is that the liquid crystals never fully block the passage of all the light, so black is never truly black, some light always seeps through. In addition brightness is limited to that of the backlight and the light is attenuated as it has to pass through the crystals and polariser. In addition if the backlight is too bright then the blacks get brighter too which limits the overall contrast range. Another issue is that LCD’s take time to change state from on to off and off to on. This leads to lag and smear with fast motion or high refresh rates. While a lot of money has been spent over the years developing LCD technology and there are some excellent LCD monitors available, these issues still exist and LCD performance still lags behind that of CRT’s.

Enter OLED. Organic Light Emitting Diode displays use a grid of light emitting devices, each pixel is a separate emitter, so when it’s off, it’s truly off. This means that blacks are completely black. When the emitter is on the light it emits is not passing through a polariser or crystal so it’s brightness is not diminished, this means that whites are really bright. In addition you can switch an LED on and off pretty much instantly so there is no lag or smearing. When you see the new Sony PVM-740 OLED monitor side by side with a similar LCD monitor the difference is striking! It’s like looking through a window, the image is clear and crisp, blacks are… well.. black and whites are bright and sparkle. The pictures from the PVM-740 are much more like the images you would expect to get from a top spec CRT monitor, yet the 740 is light weight, compact and uses less power. It should also be more robust and will not be affected by magnetic fields like a CRT monitor.

You really need to see this monitor in the flesh to appreciate the images it produces.

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Multi Camera Shoot-Out at Visual Impact.

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Cameras waiting to be tested

I’m doing a multi camera shoot out at Visual Impact tomorrow in order to put together a DVD of native clips from many of the currently available HD cameras. So far we have  the following cameras lined up for the test:

PDW-700, PMW-350, EX3, HPX-301 and HPX3700. Hopefully we will be able to include some JVC’s cameras in a future session. The idea is to compile a DVD of raw footage from all of these cameras under identical lighting situations to enable potential buyers to see for themselves the differences (or not) between the cameras and workflows. It is not going to be a “which is best” review or comparison as all the cameras have strengths and weaknesses. I’ll post details of how to get a copy of the DVD in due course.

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PXU-MS240 SxS Backup device. First Impressions.

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I have been playing with a Sony PXU-MS240 SxS backup device. It’s quite different to my NextoDi NVS2500 even though it essentially does the same job. I will be reviewing it in some detail very soon, but here are my first thoughts.

The key feature is that unit has a removable 240Gb hard drive module. Extra drives are readily available and the removable drives can be used as stand-alone USB hard drives without the main unit. Each hard drive cartridge comes in a sturdy box that is much like a Betacam cassette box. There is space on the drives for labels and the box has an insert sleeve that can be used to write on, just like a tape. Clearly this has been done so that as you fill up drives you can pop them on a shelf for longer term storage as you would with a tape. The beauty of the MS240 is that you never need to off load footage, you just add cartridges as you fill them up.

The main unit is 12 volt powered or can run off a standard EX battery. There is a slot at the front for a SxS card and a big Copy button on the top panel along with the power button and menu controls. There is also a small and very clear LCD display that tells you what the unit is doing. In the setup menu you can choose whether to simply copy the SxS cards contents or to do a copy with full verification in one pass.

Another way to verify your clips is to plug it in to an EX camera. The MS240 is supplied with a USB to Express card adapter. You plug the adapter into an EX’s SxS slot and the USB end into the MS240 and then you can use the EX to  playback any clips on the  MS240 in full HD. This is something the Nexto cannot do. It also means that you could use the MS240 to store finished edits for playback via an EX over HDSDi.

The build quality is good and the range of connectivity is also good with eSATA and USB on the main unit and USB on the cartridges. A 16Gb card can be copied to the drive in around 5 mins.

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PMW-350 – Good for Indie Movies?

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I have been giving a lot of thought to the PMW-350 and whether it fits in with what I do. I’m really, really torn. While I love my PDW-700 and the optical disc workflow I also really liked the PMW-350 package. Now to bring my PDW-700 up to a similar package would mean purchasing a colour viewfinder (C35W £6,500) and a new ALAC compatible HD lens (£8k +). The cost of these options is around the same price as a PMW-350 kit with lens. The 350 has a wonderful colour VF as standard and is very nice to use. It has much lower power consumption than the 700 and weighs a lot less, which would be very nice for me with all the traveling I do.

PMW-350 – With Convergent Designs NanoFlash

The downside to the PMW-350 is the 35 Mb/s data rate and the use of CMOS sensors. The 35 Mb/s issue is easy enough to get around as I have a couple of NanoFlashes which can record at higher bit rates, making the 350 suitable for HD broadcast without any issues. The CMOS sensors, for most people would not really be an issue, especially now Sony have incorporated flash band removal into the clip browser software, but for me it’s important because of the amount of lightning I shoot. Certainly I can get good results with my EX1 and EX3 but I really don’t know yet how the 350 will perform.

While thinking about all this, it occurred to me that the 350 would probably make a really good camera for Indie Films. The use of 2/3? sensors means that it’s easier to get a reasonably shallow depth of field compared to 1/3? or even 1/2? cameras, without having to resort to 35mm lens adapters. The very high resolution images with very, very low noise would certainly look good projected on to a big screen. If you took the HDSDi output and record it on a NanoFlash at 100Mb/s or higher then it will grade very well. The lack of camera noise (59db) means that you can really push and pull the picture very hard during grading before it will degrade. Even if you only record at 35 Mb/s this low noise floor is going to help with grading as less noise means less stress on the codec in the first place. On top of all that the supurb sensitivity means that you will be able to use very minimal lighting rigs, perhaps just using practicals to light a scene, which should really give you more scope in your composition.

Further PMW-350 advantages include the use of Sony’s Hypergammas, step gamma and multi-matrix. These settings are normally only found right at the high end of the product range and give you excellent control of the look of your images. Add to that 24P (23.98P) and the ability to overcrank and undercrank and it all adds up to an extremely capable camera.

So, will I be getting a PMW-350? Well if I didn’t have my PDW-700 I would certainly be getting a 350. At the moment I’m still undecided….. if only I could work out a way to afford both.