New Sony PMW-500 camcorder offers solid-state recording

Sony has introduced the PMW-500 shoulder-mount professional camcorder, part of its XDCAM line of tapeless acquisition technologies.

The new camcorder, which is designed for broadcasters, live event production, documentaries, rental companies and other professional applications, combines the picture quality and performance of Sony’s PDW-F800 optical disc camera with the operational flexibility of recording onto solid-state SxS memory cards. The PMW-500 is equipped with three 2/3in Power HAD FX CCD image sensors and can record both 1080 and 720 HD pictures at 50Mb/s.

The PMW-500 has two slots for recording onto SxS memory card cards, which provide a high level of reliability and fast access to recorded data. Sony is also adding a new higher-capacity 64GB (SBS-64G1A) card, which can record two hours of material at HD422 50Mb/s MXF mode or more than four hours in DVCAM mode and has an increased transfer speed of 1.2Gb/s.