EX1 in China's Quake Zone, Part 2

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EX1 in China''s Quake Zone, Part 1 When the tragic Sichuan earthquake (magnitude 7.9) struck China on May 12, HBO decided to send a filmmaker to the region almost immediately in order to capture documentary footage. ...

This is the second part of an in-depth look at the use of the Sony EX1 camcorder to acquire footage of the 2008 China earthquake disaster. For the first part of the article visit EX1 in China's Quake Zone, Part 1.

But it''s not just the workflow of a flash memory camera that excites the teams at DCTV. Again, it comes down to light.

“[The EX1] has a complete transparent transfer of light, whether you''re in wide angle or zoom,” Alpert says. “The Z1U, for example, if you''re in a dark environment, and you''re right on the edge of having enough light, you''ve already thrown your gain in, you start to zoom in on your subject, and for some particular reason, your f-stop starts to close down on you. You start losing light rapidly, and if you''re in complete telephoto you really can''t use the picture. With this camera, there is no drop off in the amount of light that''s passed through from wide-angle to zoom. So, that''s pretty cool.

“I think the main thing would be the incredible amount of detail that''s in the pictures,” Alpert says. “In this area, you''d be panning the rubble there, and you can see the little ducks, the child''s book bag, with such extraordinary clarity, and then you wind up on the face of one of the parents, and you can see the tears rolling down their face. It really helps you tell the story, because these details might not be apparent with a lesser camera.”

They shot everything in 1080i, both the film on China and the basketball doc.

“Had we had the EX1 from the very beginning [of the basketball story], a very cool feature we''ve experimented with... is that you can shoot in 720p, and that''s what all the sports broadcasters use and that''s what ESPN requires delivery in," Alpert says.

"The progressive experiment we''ve done with the EX1 looks fantastic," Alpert says. "Basically, it looks like you''re taking a series of still shots instead of video. So, when you slow it down, you see these high school kids – beat – beat – beat – beat – moving for the slam dunk. It''s basically the super slo-mo that the network sports are doing. But they''re doing it with, I dare to say, probably a $10- to 15-million dollar truck and $100- $150,000 cameras by the time you put those lenses on. We''re doing it basically for the price of a Hyundai.”

If Alpert were to get picky, he''d ask for s little wider lens to get right in people''s faces, but being out of doors with lots of light for almost everything they did in China, he says there were no drawbacks at all. In fact, last but certainly not least, flash cards are much easier to hide from the authorities – at least for now.

“If you''re in a hostile environment and somebody might be coming to take away your tapes, these things are easier for you to do slight-of-hand things with,” Alpert says. “Right now, people who would normally be coming to take your tapes away would be looking for tapes, and might not even understand what you''re recording on. Over the course of the week, this environment became not only hostile in terms of the disaster of the earthquake and the dust and the tragedy, but it also became hostile because the authorities were in the process of trying to kick all the reporters, including us, out of there.”

They got out with 50 to 60 hours of material.