Is it a bird? Is it a phone? No, it is a camera. The last few months we have seen some new cameras come on the market and as RED predicted a long time ago 4K is big. This week I’m thinking about this new little Sony that will be available soon. Here is the B&H link.
Sure it does 4K, but the remarkable thing that caught my eye is the High Frame rate. Like the Sony FS700 this thing can shoot 240fps, 480fps, and 960fps. Through whatever line doubling magic I’m sure the quality diminishes the higher you go like on the FS700, but for $1300 you have a tool in your bag that can shoot 240fps at 1080. Wow. Other features that are nice include a constant 2.8 through the zoom range and the ability to record in SLOG2.
It looks like they have limited 4K recording to 30fps. And it is a smaller than S35 sensor so depth of field characteristics will be a little more “video” like.
Something to keep our eyes on.
This just came today.
It is the Metabones Speed booster ULTRA Canon EF to Sony E mount lens adaptor. I’ll be testing it out on an FS700 this weekend. I was impressed with the speedbooster before and the Ultra promises to have increased corner sharpness and less vignetting. Sounds good to me.
NAB is just around the corner. There will be new tools and gadgets for sure. It is fun to speculate what will be the big trend. I’m not basing my predictions on anything too scientific, just what I have been seeing in my work, students’ work and others throughout the industry. Last year was all about 4K, with the Black Magic camera that I guessed they would make before it was announced. (it just started shipping last month I think). This year will be all about High Speed cameras. We’ve seen some of this with the basically boring Sony FS-700. A work horse video camera with a 4K upgrade path. The on-board recording is AVCHD but you can send an uncompressed signal out through SDI. What makes this thing cool is the ability to shoot a burst recording at high speed, what they call S&Q (slow and quick). It will do 120FPS, 240FPS, 480 and 960. Using some fancy math and at the expense of quality you can get all of those frame rates at 1080. The 120 and 240 look great, but 480 and 960 are really just for screwing around.
Ok, so this wasn’t intended to be a review of the FS-700, but it shows the path and trend we are on. People want slo-mo video in their projects. The Go Pro can do 120 at 720. The new GH4 has a burst up to 96 I believe. There was mention of a mirror-less camera from another manufacturer that had 240 and higher at reduced resolutions. Arri’s new Amira will do 200FPS with the purchase of the key$$$ to unlock it. My prediction is that we will see a lot of cameras with a 120fps capable rate and at least one under $5K that will do 240fps well.
In the mean time here is a clip from the FS-700 at 240FPS.
set-up test: Jami and Adam from little tree films on Vimeo.
blog about things cinema related
