I wanted to find out whether I could use Sony’s new small-profile full-res HD camera, the PMW-EX1 XDCAM EX, in shooting motorsports because it requires a long telephoto lens to get in tight on the action.

For years I have had the opportunity of shooting motorsports in super-16mm for Creative Automotive Media Group (CAMG), a premier creative house that produces action motorsports films that enthrall audiences and win frequent awards. Director Renny Harlin tapped into CAMG for a key role in creating the race sequences for the Driven with Sylvester Stallone. Those scenes were some of the best things about the film.

CAMG producer Greg Gears routinely orders 500mm lenses to capture imagery of a major sponsor’s race team in CART, IRL, CORR, Grand Am, and now NASCAR.  The first time he showed me his new EX1 he suggested, “I’d like to see if we can use our long lenses with this camera.” It was important to see whether new digital workflow efficiencies that the EX1 offers could be harnessed for our intense style of shooting.

I went to the experts at Birns & Sawyer because I heard they had the P&S Technik “contraption” that allows their PL mount lenses to be attach to the front of HDV cameras.  It’s a configuration that’s very popular with narrative and dramatic filmmakers, because it gives the little cameras the same depth-of-field and “look” ─ characteristic of a 35mm camera.  This aspect wasn’t so important for me though.  I was searching for an answer to the long lens question. Camera rental manager Steve Grimm replied, “Yes, the P&S Technik would allow you to put a PL mount zoom on the camera, if we can make an adapter ring for that new lens diameter.”

Within a week, they forged the One Ring that stepped down the EX1’s 77mm barrel to the 72mm diameter of the contraption, forming an invisible connection by screwing into the filter ring on the lens.

There is actually an optical relay that screws into the camera lens and is bayonet-mounted to the P&S Technik floating ground glass device that the lens of the camera focuses on.  Once focus is set, the ground glass is spun by a variable speed motor and becomes invisible in the light path.  You then adjust focus on whatever add-on lens you are using.

“Let’s put up the Angenieux 25-250mm,” I said, though I was baffled about how we would mount it on such a small camera. “No problem,” Steve announced.  “Stacy is the tech expert and he’ll figure it out.”  So Stacy Strode, their camera repair guru, showed me how the P&S Technik Mini-35 lens converter actually held the EX1 in its cradle assembly with its own bridge plate for mounting on a tripod.  But we needed to support the heavy lens as well.  So out came a 35mm base plate with 19mm rods.  Now we had two sliding base plates joined together, and the whole assembly was looking like a contraption on steroids.  It was hard to tell where the lens ended and the camera body began.

I turned on the camera, adjusted settings, and after screwing up a few adjustments (some settings are done with the camera and some are set on the lens), I aimed at a street sign at the end of the block.  It almost filled the frame!  “Let’s add the 2x extender,” I told Stacy. Now we were pushing the envelope, but I really wanted to try for that 500mm goal.

Steve Grim said, “You know, the Mini-35 lens converter is designed to give true 35mm focal lengths on one-third-inch chip cameras, [and] the EX1 is a half-inch chip.  That means: to get the same field-of-view that a 500mm lens gets in the 35mm format ─ but shooting on to a half-inch chip ─ you have a focal length-equivalent multiplied by 1.3 times.”

  Whoa!! That’s a lot of millimeters to swing around on a fluid head.  Would the camera put up with this kind of treatment, or would its deep-down sensor systems ─ programmed by the Sony engineers ─ rebel at the thought? 

As I panned to a billboard and framed up a shot of a sailboat in the Caribbean, people in the Birns showroom stared with amazement at the Panasonic hi-def monitor.  “Where are you shooting that?  What kind of camera is that?”  I pointed out the piece of billboard peeking out across the street and they were still amazed.