Adam Docker of Red Earth Studio shot a 10-part series in Malawi on the Sony PDW-700 XDCAM camera. In this programme he reviews the camera's facilities and the XDCAM workflow.

Article first published: April 2009

I’ve been a lighting cameraman for the past 15 years, predominantly in sport, factual documentaries and music videos. We’ve been using Digibeta cameras, 570s, the Panasonic Varicams. The workflow with tape was very slow, so we were always looking for a new system.

With Sony’s XDCAM, we were a little unsure until the PDW-700 came out. We had previously done a small corporate job, and had decided to use and test the F350 XDCAM camera. As a workflow system, it was fantastic, enabling us to edit the footage really quickly and produce something for the client by the end of the evening. However, as it only used 1/2-in chips, the quality of the picture wasn’t what we wanted.

When the 700 came out, I popped down to Mitcorp to look around the camera, and was impressed. I like what it does; it has a nice picture, which I’m able to play with afterwards in post, and I think that’s the most important thing for me. As it’s a 2/3in chip camera, I’m able to use the proper HD Canon lenses; I like the HJ11 and the HJ22. Hopefully soon, I’ll be able to operate it with the Letus35 adaptor, so I can then use SLR lenses, to shoot something with shallower depth of field.

We’ve have a 10x one-hour series we’re currently shooting with the 700. We’ve just returned from our first trip to Malawi, and the setup worked brilliantly well. We’d film during the day, come back in the evening, dump everything onto an external hard drive, and we were able to view the footage there and then, and do a couple of rough cuts on an HD project. It was fantastic to be able to do that.

Ergonomically, I like it. It fits well on the shoulder. The only downside is that, because we’re using so many accessories – two radio receivers, another radio mic receiver for our channel four audio track, a radio monitor coming out of the back end, as well as top lights, etc, etc – it sucks up a hell of a lot of juice, so we’re operating with two IDX batteries. There are four channels of audio running at the same time, and being able to quickly flick between those four channels while you’ve got your headphones on is fantastic. The only downside is that with channels three and four, one of them has to remain on auto.

Going through the clips, all you have to do is click on your thumbnail picture and all your thumbnails appear. You can scroll through them and play each one individually, you can delete then if you want; it’s very simple. The quality of the monitor is not great; it’s very basic, and I wouldn’t take it for a true picture if I was looking for a white balance or a reference to my exposure for example.

One of the greatest features of the camera is its ability to read in low light situations. But not only that, when you have to punch the gain, you don’t really get the noise in the picture. We filmed something in a hut in the middle of Africa and it was pitch black, so I really had to push it. When I was looking at it in the edit suite, I was extremely, and pleasantly, surprised at how clean the picture was. We had been in two minds about using the 700 or the new Panasonic Varicam. Everyone loves that slow motion and fast motion that you can get with the Varicam, and which Sony have replicated on the EX3 and EX1.

Unfortunately, they haven’t been able to put it on the 700, which is an absolute shame. However, we’ve decided to go ahead with this camera because of its other advantages, and if we do need a slow motion shot, we use the EX3. We found that with the Sony camera, the blacks are actually quite black and the whites are very white. But we found a setup written by the BBC (see sidebar), which we’ve entered into the camera to bring down the blacks and the whites and flatten the picture a little bit more, so we are able to punch the colors in post should we want to, or play around with it, so that we have a little bit more latitude.

The best bit about the camera really is the workflow – the ability on site to download the footage to an external hard drive, review everything, log it, and once the shoot’s over, bring the hard drive into the edit suite and drop everything into our RAID. It’s all there, and everything’s already backed up onto disk. That disk goes straight into your archive, or into a box hidden away, and it’s fantastic; it’s a fantastic workflow. I’m really happy with this camera: it has the quality I’m looking for, and that’s the most important thing.

Adam Docker Adam Docker of Red Earth Studio is a director of photography with 15 years experience of filming in nearly every corner of the globe, shooting pretty much everything from docos, sport, corporates, commercials to music videos.