...can anyone confirm whether the EX can indeed focus AND zoom at teh same time?

Well, offering a varifocal lens instead of a zoom lens would be one way to get more quality for less money, but I don't see Sony doing that without being very clear about it, even bragging about it.

>>>lens faulty?>>>>
There does appear to be vignetting on some cameras in the examples posted. That it appears mid-zoom is puzzling. Why does it occur? We don't have engineering/optical/firmware knowledge of the camera, so we don't know and cannot make an intelligent guess. It may be fun for people to speculate and even to dream up issues about the manufacturers, but to me that is a very annoying waste of time.
When we find a problem with a piece of software (such as Vegas or Cineform) we get good technical support and fixes when we supply them with details and examples of the problem. So people seeing vignetting should have spent their time quantifying the circumstances and nature of the vignetting (including determining the gradient) rather than trying to guess the cause. Even should our guess be correct, we cannot fix it. Only Sony can do that and maybe none of the cameras they have exhibit the "fault".

Part of the problem is that with most of the newer cameras the lens isn't a separate part of the camera that can be studied on its own. The lens is most likely just fine, the most probable guess I've read of is a lens / imager alignment problem but as you say we don't know how this lens works and the image that the camera delivers is not even the one that the lens projects onto the imager.
The standard test methods for lenses were developed first for cine lenses and then tube based video cameras. Digital imagers don't respond to light the same as film or tube cameras and now the manufacturers have added things like CAC into the mix it'd be impossible to tell just what the lens itself is doing.
But I felt that several of the posts were fairly specific about the conditions that bought on the problem. If it does indeed also involve the OIS and the camera needs to be panning to bring on the problem it's easy enough to see how it could be missed. There's no quantitative measurements for an OIS system and no lens test system involves panning the camera.
Even the terminology we use is confusing. Just what is 'vignetting' and how is it different to 'portholing'.

Bob.

From Adam Wilt, testing an engineering sample of the EX:

There is vignetting at wide apertures from 10mm onwards, but Sony tells me that it's due to a bug in this engineering sample's auto-focus system, so I'll refrain from further commentary until I have a production model to work with.

Read the whole story, with lots of useful info, at Cinematographer.com.

Adam Wilt is about to do a review of a production model, so that will be interesting.
"I'm supposed to get a real one for review (preproduction, but not a prototype: final hardware/software aside from the analog I/O board).
Real Soon Now (supposed to arrive today, but didn't), and I'll be putting it through proper tests--both charts and real-world scenes, including (I hope) a proper commercial-style shoot. Full review should go online in the 3rd or 4th week of December.

Cheers,
Adam Wilt / shoots, edits / Mountain View CA USA"

Obviously the camera is of interest to people of Adam's ilk and discussion in more measured tones is starting on the CML site. That below isn't a deep technical evaluation and because he missed the requests for tests he may not have been aware of the "vignetting issue" that has been raised (not necessarily the same as Adam Wilt saw in his pre-production model).
We may note that options for setting the image profile appear to have gone unexplored and my guess is that the PP "installed" was set up expanding blacks at the expense of highlights. That might cause us to wonder about the depth of the evaluation below, but here you are:

"> Okay, here is my preliminary findings with the EX camera today. Unfortunately, I missed your requests and as I said, I had limited time with it.<

I tested a few things that were high on my priority list (not in orderof importance, just as it comes to me) ALL FOOTAGE SHOT AT 1920X1080 24P (HQ 35mbs)

1) The Lens: Don't need to go in depth here because it is as good as you've read. It doesn't breath nor does it ramp the f-stops on the long end of the lens! Nice. No vignetting, or weird color aberrations that I could detect. It seemed perfect to me. Seems like issues the prototype had and now problems are resolved. On a side note, the LCD is gorgeous.

2) Button Layout and Menus: Better than some of the reports have said. Being a small camera some of the buttons like white balance are awkward to get at but nothing too bad to gripe about. Buttons are way too small though. The Menu structure, I found for me, was pretty intuitive (compared to the sony Z1U and P2 anyway)However, the menu and different functions are still split between "menu" and "picture profile" which I don't like so much. One menu tree please, not two.

3) Weight, balance, build quality: I don't know if it's been said but you simply cannot hand hold and operate this camera from the grip. It's incredibly off-balanced and everything tips to the left no matter what you do! If you want to go hand held, best go with another support device (fig rig, glide) or operate from the top handle and get carpal syndrome! Overall, the camera seems to be a pleasure to operate, feels very rugged but again it must be stated that it's actually impossible to use the hand grip and operate.

4) Image Quality: I'll break this down into a couple of parts. First, what I shot was some daylight exteriors at dusk and an Interior set-up under DIVA lights with green screen because I want to see how this camera handles compositing with a 4:2:0 color space.
a) Color: Very nice. rich, smooth, saturated colors. lots of tonality and no artifacting that I could see.

b) Dynamic range: I am very impressed with the camera's ability to dig deep into the shadows. This was the biggest surprise to me by far.
Lots of tonality surprisingly in the darks/blacks and mids and nothing seems
crushed here. The highlights however are another story. As the camera is set-up now, the highlights are handled poorly. Clouds at sunset showed no rolling into
detailed whites. It just burned in hell from the outset. All highlights burned hard no matter what I shot. Something must be set wrong because it handled blacks so well and whites so poorly? Had no time to trouble shoot so I chalked it up to needs more testing on this one but this would be a deal breaker for me if it can't be
resolved.

5) Workflow: Only got as far as offloading a 8GB card directly to my Macbook Pro via the built in SxS card reader on the side. Drag and drop, 8GB (3o minutes) took roughly 4 minutes to copy. Installing the driver and application program was a breeze.

The actual application program for viewing clips is downright cruel. It's clunky and slow and there's absolutely nothing polite to say about it. Each clip has its own folder containing five files each.( the actual MP4 contains the audio and video. Each clip also has a SMI file, PPN, XML, and BIM files) Quicktime Pro cannot simply play an MP4 file even when copied to the computer. It has to be imported into sony's "XDCAM clip browser" and I haven't yet figured out how to import more than one clip at a time. Like I said... Clunky, slow. The importing into the viewer
takes time too! When you finally do get the clips in, the playback is crippled. All
clips are interlaced and artifacted and frames seem to be dropped all over the place. TOTAL GARBAGE.

The upside is and this is a big tip, you can use VLC media player to open and play the clips directly and completely bypass Sony's crap software all together! (same think like no one uses Nikon capture One for RAW anymore) Simply drag and drop MP4 clips into the viewer window and hit play. The only caveat is... No sound. VLC is notorious for this problem. But at least you can see it as it's meant to be seen.

6) Gain: gained right up to 12db and the image was still usable. This is subjective anyway. Very little noise with this camera. hard pressed to see any noise at 6
or even 9db. Very impressive. Has -3db option too.

7) 24P: Almost forgot about 24P. Works fantastic. No stuttering, no flicker at all when played back from camera to monitor or using VLC media to play back. Do not judge 24P quality using "EX Clip Browser". Sony seemed to finally get this one right unlike the horrible attempt at 24P in the Z1U.
However, it almost seems like a lack of effect in a weird way. More testing needs to be done with this frame rate but it works and it's very usable.

That's about all I can say at the moment. In the end, this camera outperforms the P2 which it is aimed at, but at the moment workflow is actually still better on the P2! Quality looks as good or almost as good as the 350 XDCam but with
better resolution and more practical features and options. For sure the best camera in it's category and offers an absolute incredible "Bang for Buck".

David Suddaby
Toronto / DP"

EDIT: being queried on the vignetting issue:

"I checked for vignetting throughout the focal lengths and it was perfect. At least on the camera I had yesterday. The lens is awesome

David Suddaby
Toronto / DP"

interesting..

funny how the lowly HVX and DVX can do this..

no other camera in this range has the capability..

as for not being able to focus and zoom at the same time, then it truly is NOT a manual lens as its been hyped....

funny how the lowly HVX and DVX can do this.. no other camera in this range has the capability..

Do what?

as for not being able to focus and zoom at the same time, then it truly is NOT a manual lens as its been hyped....

Where did you see that?

The lens has separate focus, zoom and iris rings, so where has this issue come from? The programmed transition function certainly handles all three simultaneously, and the Z1 and FX1 will simultaneously focus and zoom in both manual and auto.