In yesterday’s blog I didn’t get a chance to describe Sony’s press conference, so let’s catch up.

Sony is the largest exhibitor at NAB and their Sunday press conferences are large, slick affairs. I’ve genuinely enjoyed them through the years, though Sony as well as Panasonic could learn a thing or two from Apple, whose stage personalities memorize their presentations. Robotic readings, unnatural eyelines from footlight teleprompters, jokes fed from prepared text—it’s not pretty. Neither are taped testimonials from smiley-faced Christian evangelicals representing megachurches delighted with their Sony HD systems.

I’ve nothing personally against this market segment, but I squirmed at the mention of Jesus Christ to a mixed, international audience. What this sort of thing is doing at a Sony press conference full of trade journalists—for the second year in a row–is anyone’s guess. A Jewish journalist friend of mine from Moscow sitting in the next row looked uncomfortable, if not quietly flabbergasted.

Gaffes aside, Sony is an innovation powerhouse, and what’s dependably fun about Sony’s NAB press conferences are the dazzle and surprise. It’s always exciting to be the first to encounter what they’ve come up with.

For the second year in a row, Sony’s massive NAB booth (you’ll need a GPS to navigate it) is “all HD,” said Senior VP of Sales and Marketing Alec Shapiro, who noted it contained “25 new models” of HD gear including eight camcorders under $13,000. (Good luck trying to verify this count. Sony’s booth this morning was a mob scene. Hard to steal even a glimpse of anything on display.)

Mobbed as well were Sony reps, holding up models of the new EX3 for journalists to photograph at the conclusion of the press conference.

How could there be an EX3 when the EX1 debuted only a few months ago?

But there it was. Essentially it’s an EX1 with interchangeable lenses and a weird oversized viewfinder cobbled together from the EX1’s flip-out LCD and a sizable arrangement of viewing optics. Compared to the compact EX1, the EX3 has a slightly longer body that upends like a duck tail (vaguely resembling a Canon XL H1) to permit bracing the camcorder against the shoulder. If desired, a small shoulder pad tucked into the rear can extend about an inch towards the operator’s shoulder. It elongates the EX3’s profile for better quasi-shoulder mounting. This will please a lot of folks alarmed by early complaints about the EX1’s balance and ergonomics. (I also noticed the large, solidly attached viewfinder might be bolstered by the left hand to better stabilize the EX3’s horizon. Tried it. Works.)

Peek at the rear of the EX3 and you’ll discover a round multi-pin connector that permits the EX3 to be fully remote controlled, including paintbox. Given lens interchangeability, I can see these camcorders being employed as economy studio cameras. (They’re $13K, including the supplied Fujinon lens.) Check back in a year to see if I’m right.

Another clever detail is a small dial on the operator’s side. Turn it to adjust the frame rate in one frame increments from 1-60fps in 720p, or 1-30fps in 1080p. How cool is that?

About that interchangeable lens mount: it’s completely non-standard, causing conniptions at at least one major lens company. I find it either insane or insanely inspired that the EX3 goes its own way, not sharing the standard ½” lens mount found on Sony’s XDCAM line. Why would Sony do this? No one at the press conference could answer that question, but I suspect the new, full-throated design confers a number of advantages. With greater diameter, it’s got to be stronger and sturdier. The wider clamping ring is easier to tighten and release. And the larger diameter better matches the lens mount standards found in SLRs and 35mm film cameras, particularly the PL mount.

Also new at the press conference was the PDW-700, Sony’s first 2/3” 3-CCD XDCAM optical disc camcorder. (Same 1920×1080 progressive-scan CCDs as F23, but you didn’t hear it here.) The PDW-700 captures 1080i/p and 720p in both 60/50 rates—with one glaring omission: no 24p! Color subsampling is 4:2:2, MPEG is high-quality 50 Mbps, 50 GB discs are dual layer, and HD/SD conversion is built-in. But the lack of 24p is going to hurt.

Unexpectedly, Shapiro also announced a prototype SxS card recorder for the PDW-700, to ride piggy-back behind the battery. SxS is the PCI Express/34 card format developed by Sony and Sandisk for the EX1 and EX3. Why would an optical disc camcorder already equipped with file-based recording need a second nonlinear recording device? Convenience in the field? Recent laptops from Apple and others do include PCI Express/34 slots, making file transfers from SxS a snap.

My guess is that the stream of video recorded to the XDCAM disc could answer archival needs. But capturing simultaneously to two media, usually with different capacities, is no picnic. Anyone who has tried it under field conditions (as I have recently, using a Sony Z7 to record HDV to both tape and CF card) can attest that it can become a major juggling act. (As if the camcorder operator doesn’t have enough on his/her mind.) It’ll be interesting to see if this dual recording technique from Sony and others catches on.

At the conclusion of the press conference, almost as an afterthought, two items went hardly mentioned: Sony’s startling 11” OLED viewfinder for studio cameras and the bold F35, a 35mm-sized single-sensor digital cinema camera on display at Band Pro’s booth. Why bold? The F35 is an F23 with a way-bigger sensor, nothing less than Sony’s version of the Panavision Genesis.

The F23 debuted here a mere year ago.

And did anyone else notice that the breakthrough Z7 and S270 HDV camcorders introduced several months ago were not pictured or mentioned?

Enough inventive ferment at Sony to makes one’s head spin.