Nate Weaver
Veteran
Last night there was a 55 on display at a friends retail open house, and people were more interested in socializing, so I got some good time in with the menus and buttons. Simply a brain dump of thoughts:
-The OLED finder is 100% on par with the Alexa finder. There was an Alexa 5ft away. I'd go so far as to say it's better because it doesn't do the LCOS rainbow when your eye moves fast.
-Peaking and focus assist for EVF is modified in menu, but there are more controls than usual, and they are tuned very well. I was able to punch in a subtle "peaking" that was tuned to react to only the finest, sharpest detail and was not so coarse in the finder that it was distracting to other parts of your frame. Again, VERY Alexa like. You can also do color peaking/focus assist. I can only hope users of the LCD finder will get the same refinement in peaking, it is a treat. I was pretty worried that this part of this camera would be on par with an EX1/F3. It is not.
-firmware was version 1.02. OLED finder was serial one forty something. Sony have been busy elves. I very much wanted to see the camera serial, but was not visible.
-I forgot to look for histogram or waveform. Boo on me.
-I was disappointed with menu speed, I found it very easy to overshoot selections because of the slowness.
-The side control panel is very, very usable and plenty responsive. I realized for most work I will be able to turn the info display in the EVF off (I hate how Sony covers up the image with data), and just take quick looks at the control panel between clips/takes to make sure where you are on media, batt, etc. You can easily dial in a WB temp numerically via side control.
-Boot time was very good, maybe around 8 seconds. Image was visible in EVF and on SDI output before boot was completed.
-Image in a dim showroom at 6400ISO was very, very usable. As noisy as your average Panasonic at 0db :thumbsup: This was a 55 rated at 1250, mind you, not a 5 that's base rated at 2000.
-The way the camera/paint section is set up, there are MANY ways to make your image "uncinematic". When shooting S-Log2, you can easily have any of the following image killers operational: Detail, Aperture (!), Color matrix level and channel levels), etc. For this reason, take any video-ey footage you see from the camera with a grain of salt. I am betting there will be many folks out there shooting with detail on, aperture on, home baked "cinema" color matrices that turn this awesome sensor into an DVX100. The best thing you can do for the F3s sensor or the 55s is simply get out of it's way and leave it alone. I've seen the 55 raw, it's tremendous.
-The OLED finder is 100% on par with the Alexa finder. There was an Alexa 5ft away. I'd go so far as to say it's better because it doesn't do the LCOS rainbow when your eye moves fast.
-Peaking and focus assist for EVF is modified in menu, but there are more controls than usual, and they are tuned very well. I was able to punch in a subtle "peaking" that was tuned to react to only the finest, sharpest detail and was not so coarse in the finder that it was distracting to other parts of your frame. Again, VERY Alexa like. You can also do color peaking/focus assist. I can only hope users of the LCD finder will get the same refinement in peaking, it is a treat. I was pretty worried that this part of this camera would be on par with an EX1/F3. It is not.
-firmware was version 1.02. OLED finder was serial one forty something. Sony have been busy elves. I very much wanted to see the camera serial, but was not visible.
-I forgot to look for histogram or waveform. Boo on me.
-I was disappointed with menu speed, I found it very easy to overshoot selections because of the slowness.
-The side control panel is very, very usable and plenty responsive. I realized for most work I will be able to turn the info display in the EVF off (I hate how Sony covers up the image with data), and just take quick looks at the control panel between clips/takes to make sure where you are on media, batt, etc. You can easily dial in a WB temp numerically via side control.
-Boot time was very good, maybe around 8 seconds. Image was visible in EVF and on SDI output before boot was completed.
-Image in a dim showroom at 6400ISO was very, very usable. As noisy as your average Panasonic at 0db :thumbsup: This was a 55 rated at 1250, mind you, not a 5 that's base rated at 2000.
-The way the camera/paint section is set up, there are MANY ways to make your image "uncinematic". When shooting S-Log2, you can easily have any of the following image killers operational: Detail, Aperture (!), Color matrix level and channel levels), etc. For this reason, take any video-ey footage you see from the camera with a grain of salt. I am betting there will be many folks out there shooting with detail on, aperture on, home baked "cinema" color matrices that turn this awesome sensor into an DVX100. The best thing you can do for the F3s sensor or the 55s is simply get out of it's way and leave it alone. I've seen the 55 raw, it's tremendous.
