The UGK-F900 upgrade kit for the HDW-F900 camcorders has arrived after being announced last year at NAB. With so much of the rest of the mass market electronics industry making gigantic improvements in the space of a year we can be forgiven if our expectations are too high for a significant improvement for what is a relatively low volume product.

The kit includes new DR and AD circuit boards. This provides for improved dynamic range by a change in the 12 bit A/D bit mapping.

Testing was conducted at Visual Impact with a f900 mark one and a mark 2 side by side. By overlaying the two waveforms we could easily see the difference, which is in the order of 1/2 to 2/3 of a stop with the camera in factory setting.

However 1/2 to 2/3 of a stop isn't that much at the highlight end, to the naked eye. At this rate of improvement the dynamic range of film will be met in under a decade.

Black level noise has been reduced, most noticeable at +3db.

Other improvements include an Increase in the number of Scene Files from 5 to 100, formed in 20 groups.

Each group can be named but it does not appear possible to name each scene.

 Multi-Matrix Auto Hue Detection as well as Saturation Control have been added, putting the f900 in line with its upstart younger brother the HDW750.

 White shading data for Prime Lenses has also been implemented, but it would be useful to have these preloaded. In reality a lens may come from one source and a camera another.

Perhaps each lens could be supplied with its own setup card?

 The menue has an extra level added that can be custom configured, placing most used or favourite pages from the other levels on a single page. This will be a great time saver for the operator.

1/60 or 1/50 Shutter in 24/25/30P Modes now available.

 A 5600 Color Temperate Filter replaces the clear Cross Filter. The positioning of this filter at No1 position is a little silly. One would expect the filters to be in order of temperature. We surmise that it was easier and cheaper to replace just the one filter and not shift all the other filters around?

An option to fit the Schnieder filters in the filter wheel at the same time was not on offer. I couldn't begin to understand the politics involved of paying for a set of Schneider filters that would be fitted by a Sony engineer under a Sony warranty! As yet there aren't any tests to date to indicate how the new Schneider filters perform.

The V2.0 software provides the capability to utilise the CineAlta gamma editor software (provided free of charge with the UGK-F900 software).  

This allows Allows emulation of various film-like gamma curves. Custom curves can be them saved to the memory stick. The demo at NAB of this software was a little clunky, with only 2 points being able to be selected and dragged around on the graph. A GUI interface on the PC allows the Shape Transform function to be utilised in a simple graphical manner - facilitating custom alteration of the Red, Green, and Blue Gamma curves. Too much to ask for a Mac version I suppose?

It will be interesting to see if this interface allows more control of the curve than what is already present.

After what was a fast initial design and development the upgrade is a modest step in the right direction.

Michael Brennan