The Shift from James Plumlee on Vimeo

The Sony XDCAM EX–PMW-EX1 is making shockwaves throughout the TV and Video Industry. Move over the Sony Z1 the EX1 is about to blow you out of the water. The Video above had me gobsmacked, it looks sweet in low light and the detail captured looks as the Americans would say “Awesome!”. The key thing is that it is tapeless, everything is recorded onto solid state memory cards, so no fumbling with plastic wrappers and fragile tapes. It retails at around GB£4900 or US$6500.

Here is the pitch from Sony:

“The PMW-EX1 XDCAM EX Camcorder is Sony’s exciting new addition to our XDCAM family of professional tapeless acquisition tools and our first offering in the XDCAM EX series of products. The PMW-EX1 utilizes Sony’s three newly designed 1/2-inch type “Exmor”™ CMOS sensors, each with an effective pixel count of 1920 x 1080. Coupled with our newly developed signal processing LSI, the PMW-EX1 produces truly exceptional images in 1080p, 720p and 1080i HD. Using another new Sony innovation, the SxS Memory Card flash memory device, very high data transfer speeds are also made possible in order to enhance the High Defintion content creation workflow. Utilizing the MPEG-2 Long GOP CODEC to achieve a balance of quality and the required bit rate, the PMW-EX1 boasts a long recording time - approximately 140 minutes using two 16GB SxS Memory Cards. Additionally, the PMW-EX1 offers a powerful Slow & Quick Motion feature, or what is more commonly known as “over-cranking” and “under-cranking”, to enable users to create slow and fast motion special effects. The PMW-EX1 XDCAM EX Full High Definition Camcorder represents a new level of high quality, value-added High Definition content creation professional tools. It will, once again, transform industry expectations of just how much quality can be achieved with an affordable HD camcorder.”

Buy the EX1 in UK/Europe at Purely Gadgets GB£51995.95 inc vat