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On first sighting Sony's PMW-EX3 last April at NAB, I blogged, "How could there be an EX3 when the PMW-EX1 debuted only a few months ago?" (See blog.digitalcontentproducer.com/nab.) I called it an EX1 with interchangeable lenses and noted the "weird, oversized viewfinder cobbled together from the EX1's flip-out LCD and a sizable arrangement of viewing optics." In my NAB wrap-up for this magazine, I dubbed it a "platypus," that chimerical egg-laying mammal with the bill of a duck and tail of a beaver. (See digitalcontentproducer.com/tradeshows/coverage/nab_wrapup.)
Those comments stand. It's virtually unprecedented for a manufacturer to release a follow-up product hard on the heels of the original, which highlights the fact that the EX3, despite a successive product number, is not a successor to the EX1 but rather its matched complement. In fact, had they been introduced in reverse order, this review might instead be touting the just-released EX1 as a compact, stripped-down version of the EX3 welcomed especially by documentary makers and those who slide slim camcorder cases into overhead bins while flying.
After all, the EX1 and EX3 are essentially the same camcorder. Same 1/2in. 3-CMOS imager with 1920x1080 pixels; same 1080i/p and 720p with 24p and 50Hz/60Hz field rates; same super-high-resolution LCD display; same twin S x S card slots. Even the EX3's supplied detachable lens, a dual-mechanism 14X Fujinon zoom (mechanical and electronic focus) with a true iris ring and rotating handgrip, is the same lens that comes fixed on the EX1. (See digitalcontentproducer.com/cameras/revfeat/first_look_xdcam_ex.)
Given use of the same lens, then, the EX1 and EX3 produce identical images. What has changed instead is morphology - the shape and external functionality of the EX3 compared to that of the EX1. Imagine an action-figure version of the EX1 unfolding like a Transformers toy, sprouting a duck's-tail rear end, a pop-out shoulder brace, a full-sized viewfinder, an external hard-disk recorder, and all manner of prior 2/3in. zooms using a supplied 2/3in.-to-1/2in. lens adapter - you get the idea. Sound like fun?
Shape-wise, the EX3's obvious analogue is Canon's XL H1, which debuted three years ago offering a removable zoom lens, an LCD panel doubling as viewfinder by means of large viewing optics, and an elongated body in a "chainsaw" profile that ends in a...