A sneak peak at the new PDW-700 XDCAM HD Camcorder

I recently had my hands on one of these for a couple of days and thought I would post up some pictures. This was a pre-production camera and not reflective of what the final model will be capable of. I won't write much about it here because, well, I don't actually know that much about it, what the exact final features will be, or the exact month of release. And even if I did Sony would send a hitman to assasinate me if I mentioned anything here! So you'll just have to be content with some preview photos I took.

I will say this, however. Despite the camera I used being very limited due to its pre-production nature, I will say that this is the camera people have been waiting for. Low light capabilty was on par (and perhaps even slightly better) than the Standard Def cameras, and noise in the picture was non existent. Totally non existent. As in, there really was no noise at all. Anywhere. I'm not talking about this in terms of, "Oh, this camera has very low noise, but if you look you can actually see some". No, I'm talking, "There really isn't any noise at all". Anywhere, period. And apparently Sony engineers are tweaking it all the time to reduce the noise further. I'd love to know what they are doing because from what I can see there isn't any noise to reduce!

So, without further ado, here are the photos. Oh, and before I sign off, please don't contact me to ask for screen grabs. Here's looking forward to the production model :-)

The new PDW-700 XDCAM HD
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The new PDW-700 XDCAM HD
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The new PDW-700 XDCAM HD
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Two SDI outputs, plus an input on the side.
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Audio controls front
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Audio controls rear.
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The rear air vent.
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