AF100 or FS100?

S

spotts

Active member
Crunch time here. Must buy a camera in the course of the next week or two. I've been sold
on the quality of image/feature set of the AF100 after studying test footage samples and
lurking on this forum. Now I'm wondering if the Sony FS100 might offer the edge with its larger
sensor/lower noise levels, albeit in my opinion fewer useful features. Just curious if some of you
have experience with both and could offer a little opinion one way or the other. Thanks....
 
Job coming up is a safety orientation/training piece for a large petroleum refinery. Mostly exterior/day with no artificial fill for safety reasons. Portions will be shot in fairly deep shade inside the 'bowels' of the facility. There will be a few scenes
covering 'confined spaces' which are shots involving the 'do's and don'ts' of working within and servicing huge tanks and vessels.
 
If you already like the picture quality and the features of the AF100, then roll with it. You won't regret it.
 
One is available tomorrow should I opt for it. I'm just looking at options...in that the FS100 looks as if it will require more accessories to make it fly out the gate than will the AF100. It just comes down to the image...both cams are roughly the same money. So, which?
 
The ND wheel on the the AF100 would be your friend if going from indoor to outdoor. Or bright to dim areas.
 
The FS100 sensor advantage is most prominent under very dim or outright dark conditions. If your orientation footage is to be captured without lighting the scenes, then Sony may be the ticket. I suppose you have reviewed Philip Bloom's low light comparison, where the Sony sensor shows its performance side-by-side.
 
Do your clients have to watch it on a production monitor? If yes, go with the AF100. SDI is the best and most reliable way to go for client viewing as you shoot. HDMI is pretty bad for that.

I was trying to make the same decision, but my shooting demands are far different from yours.

-I made the switch to post production from cinematography when I was offered a lucrative job 2 years ago. My clients fell away as I could not shoot for them, other than a few directors. I'm going to be shooting for myself and director friends. The professionalism and reliability of SDI is not as critical.
-My lens ranges and focal lengths (Nikon, Canon, Kowa Cine Prominars) are better suited for the S35 chip and the resulting FOV.
-I have a matt box. And ND filters.
-I really like the clean imagery, the grain, the sensitivity of the FS100 chip. The DR between the two cameras is about the same it seems.

So it was a logical choice for me to go with the FS100. Next year, it's another story perhaps.
 
based on your shooting requirements, af100 seems the right cam for the job.
id use the fs100 if i had matteboxes and scenes are set up.

go with fs100 if you have a mattebox/nd filter and fine with the on board codec
nd filter on the af100 has saved me time a lot of times.
though id love to have that awesome sony sensor :0
 
I'd consider ergonomics too. The EVF of the AF100 is crap, the handle is crap. The EVF of the Sony is probably decent, but the handle too looks like junk. But if you never hand hold, it's a mute point.

Also, I believe the low light capabilities of the Sony are superior, but I've shot dusk footage on a cloudy day in Seattle with the AF100 at ISO 2500 that looks great to my eye. But if you're shooting with candle light all the time, go with the Sony.
 
Phil H. said:
The ND wheel on the the AF100 would be your friend if going from indoor to outdoor. Or bright to dim areas.
Click to expand...

One of the simplest and best features on the AF100. Gives you control over your F-stop and therefore depth of field without having to keep ND filters for every size lens you have.
 
well the way i see it sony has 3 big pluses:

1. the low light sensitivity Sony has better sensor and i believe its like around 20% larger, so for sure better in low light, plus if we will talk about standart lens 18-200 from sony and 14-140 form pany, sony has F3.5 at wide open and pany F4.0 at wide open , its maybe not a big difference but its very noticeable when we speak about low light , so once again more light, so better sensor + F3.5 = maybe in total it will wins 1f stop for me. for sure less ISO i ll need to add.

2. Pany almost have no moire, but sony has even less moire - so a plus too

3. That is also a great future for me - we can use same lenses that we use on FS100 for other sony CamcorderSony NEX-VG10E a small camcorder with big sensor . its is great, as sometimes i just need something very small and very quick - and it would be a nice option with cheap price, i wonder if birger mount for Sony FS100 will work on NEX 10 as well - that would be great!!!!!

no SDI on sony - well i am not that kind of guy and / or do that kind of stuff that i ll use it at all, so hdmi will be ok for me, but if u r a pro then of course its a HUGE minus
No ND - huge minus also but for me as for the owner of 2 max 3 lenses i think i can live with just on lens filter, not a best option i think but .....

also for some reasons i think OIS on sony lens will do better job , from my experience OIS was always better on sony then on any other camcorder....
 
anatusa said:
1. the low light sensitivity Sony has better sensor and i believe its like around 20% larger, so for sure better in low light,
Click to expand...
The Sony is almost assuredly better in low light -- but the Panasonic, with its ND filters and ability to go down to 200 ISO, is unquestionably much better in bright light. If you have to work in the dark, the Sony will have the advantage, but if you have to work in daylight the AF100 is just way superior.

Besides -- it's not like the AF100 doesn't have superb low light performance, because it does. This was lit with one candle...

Just how much low-light performance do you need?

2. Pany almost have no moire, but sony has even less moire - so a plus too
Click to expand...
That's just not true. In fact the opposite is true -- the Sony shows a lot more visible moire effects, including having the same kind of chroma moire contamination that the Canon DSLRs have.

3. That is also a great future for me - we can use same lenses that we use on FS100 for other sony CamcorderSony NEX-VG10E a small camcorder with big sensor . its is great, as sometimes i just need something very small and very quick - and it would be a nice option with cheap price, i wonder if birger mount for Sony FS100 will work on NEX 10 as well - that would be great!!!!!
Click to expand...

Well, if one has a plan for using other Sony camcorders, then certainly staying "in the family" would be a benefit for that user. Just like why I have a GH2, which lets me use all the AF100's Lumix lenses on such a small and tiny body.

no SDI on sony - well i am not that kind of guy and / or do that kind of stuff that i ll use it at all, so hdmi will be ok for me, but if u r a pro then of course its a HUGE minus
No ND - huge minus also but for me as for the owner of 2 max 3 lenses i think i can live with just on lens filter, not a best option i think but .....
Click to expand...
To me, this is what it all comes down to. Workability. Both units will produce superb imagery, it's almost not even worth talking about the imagery, it's instead about talking about the hoops you have to jump through to make that imagery. The AF100 works the way I want it to -- I go international a lot, and the AF100 is PAL/NTSC-switchable, the FS100 isn't. The AF100 lets me choose my aperture effortlessly even in broad daylight, the FS100 requires tons of ND to get a decent exposure in daylight. While the AF100 is light and fairly small, the FS100 is even lighter and smaller, meaning that if you need the ultimate in a micro-cam, the FS100 would have the advantage there. The FS100 will have a somewhat wider field of view due to its larger sensor.

Quickest summary I can say -- the FS100 seems to me to be a result of design decisions based on asking DSLR shooters "what should we make?" It's like they went to a bunch of DSLR guys and said "we have this sensor, what kind of camera should we make around it?" Hence it fixes some of the most egregious shortcomings of DSLRs - horrible moire and rolling shutter - while still being limited to things that DSLRs are limited to like HDMI-only and no ND's. Which DSLR shooters wouldn't miss anyway. The AF100, on the other hand, seems to me to come from the other angle - a pro video camera with all that a pro video camera has, but with a larger sensor stuck in. So pro shooters get what they're used to (like HD-SDI, timecode sync, ND filter wheel, all that stuff) but at the drawback of it having a smaller sensor. I know for a fact that they held roundtables where they brought in professional video shooters and said to us "what do you want us to make, considering it'll have a $5k-ish target price?" We told 'em "Make an HPX170 with a big sensor" - and that's what they did. So it has all the features we're used to.

It all depends on how you want to work, what you're used to, what you can live with and what you can't live without.
 
That vid was ridiculous!! So funny to see how far the modern tools have come. Thanks for posting and thanks for the detailed response.
 
Barry, exactly my sentiments as to the design decisions. I have problems with the ergonomics of the Sony and can see significant additional costs (EVF/bracketry/filters/adapter rings etc.) in making it fit my shooting style. I do a significant amount
of political advertising as well when elections are in season, and a concern is always the ability to bounce from spontaneous handheld shots back to a tripod for more staged setups. I've shot primarily film over the couse of my career and am accustomed to that style. What I'm seeing now are images from these 'prosumer' cameras that look simply stunning....even to an old semi-retired film guy such as myself. BTW, I think we worked together back in the early 80's on a music video
for Matthew Wilder...was that you?
 
stevedocmaker said:
The EVF of the AF100 is crap, the handle is crap..
Click to expand...

The EVF is hardly crap compared to other cameras in its class and the handle is GREAT...not crap at all. I find it to be very comfortable and solid. I've had a mattebox and such on the thing with rails and the whole setup and carried it one handed with that handle easily. It's not crap at all.
 
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