Video Output Issue on Sony PMW-F3

Video Output Issue on Sony PMW-F3

I've seen this problem a handful times now and it's enough to totally derail your plans of doing a higher quality external recording with something like the Ki Pro Mini or Nano Flash. 

On several different camera bodies I've worked with, when outputting 23.98 psf over both SDI and HDMI, I've noticed a very fine fixed pattern noise over the entire image. It looks like a very faint mesh of black crisscrossing lines. When you do an external recording, it's 100% WYSIWYG so if you're seeing this problem on the monitor, you are definitely going to find it in your files. I've encountered some cameras that don't have this problem at all but others that do. 

I've found that going into the Video Out settings on the camera and turning on 2-3 Pulldown instead of PsF will reduce the problem but it's still there. 

I've been meaning to talk to Sony about this but haven't found the time. Has anyone out there experienced this? 

Update on 2011-04-09 07:15 by Ben Cain

I heard from the technicians at Chater Camera that there is an easy fix to this problem -

"We found a serious issue for anyone recording the HDSDI output to a KiPro or any other external recorder. Something that many people will do with this camera. You have to be sure to turn OFF the HDSDI Character Display in the camera menus. This seems logical except you can also leave this menu ON and use the external Character Display On/Off button on the camera body to remove the display characters. However if you do that there is a very fine ( almost imperceptible ) mosquito noise mesh pattern across the whole image that would ruin your footage. When we say hard to see... we mean it. We only noticed it because we were fine checking lens calibration at 2x magnification. Confirmed on two cameras."

Great to know that until Sony fixes this, there is a workaround. Talk about something that could ruin your day. I've said it before - I think Sony rushed this camera out.