The New Sony PMW-160 Camcorder and PMW-50 Field Deck

Sony is expanding its XDCAM HD422 lineup with the new PMW-160 handheld camcorder and the PMW-50 SxS field deck. With three 1/3” Exmor CMOS sensors, the camcorder was designed for broadcast and television productions. The field deck will feature a 3.5” LCD panel and an array of features for speedy post-production workflows, including the ability to copy data from an SxS memory card to an external storage device, such as a USB hard drive.

Sony PMW-160 XDCAM HD422 Camcorder

The PMW-160 camcorder can record DVCAM for NTSC and PAL countries and 1080 horizontal lines of vertical resolution at 59.94i, 50i, 29.97p, 25p, 23.98p, 720/59.94p, 50p, 29.97p and 23.98p. A Slow & Quick motion function enables capture at 1-60 frames per second in 720p mode and from 1-30 fps in 1080p mode. Of course, the defining quality of this and other XDCAM HD422 series camcorders is its ability to record at 50 Mbps with 4:2:2 color sampling.

The PMW-160’s lens is equipped with three independent rings for focus, zoom and iris adjustment with full manual control, plus an image-stabilizing function with shift lens mechanism. The lens features a 20x zoom ratio with a 35mm equivalent focal length of 29.5-590mm. The camcorder has a four-position built-in ND filter switch (Clear, 1/4, 1/16 and 1/64), and an optional Wi-Fi module will facilitate remote control of the lens, white balance and playback via a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet.

Recording media for the PMW-160 includes SxS, SDHC, Memory Stick and XQD memory cards. The camcorder also has a 15-second cache recording feature, which can start recording footage to temporary memory up to 15 seconds before the REC button is pushed, to ensure important moments are not missed. A Genlock In and Time Code In/Out interface make the PMW-160 convenient for multi-camera productions.

PMW-50 SxS Field Deck

The PMW-50 SxS field deck will play back content recorded on an SxS memory card, copy data on an SxS card to other storage devices, record an external SDI signal, convert a signal from SDI to i.LINK and more. The field deck supports a range of formats, including MPEG HD422 50Mbps (MXF) and MPEG HD420 35 Mbps (MP4). The PMW-50 can also function as an ingest machine to compatible NLE systems, and both file-based and streaming operations are supported via USB and i.LINK interfaces.