My FS700 Rig and 4K Solution Dillema

P

pythonman

Well-known member
Hi,

Like many people here I am torn as to where to go with upgrading, or adding kit, so as to add 4K ability to my arsenal of gear. Here are my thoughts and ramblings...

All my work is fairly low-cost corporate work, and 90% is performed by me alone. This is often simple product/communication/training videos both for internal or web use, and occasionally live work. A fair number of shoots involve multiple re-takes, repeating the same piece to camera to cover wide, mid-shot or close-up to give me options in the edit (using multiple cameras doesn't help when the pieces are directly to camera of course). So the idea of shooting 4K for me would save me and the client much time, as I could edit using the same 4K shots by cropping and repositioning as necessary within a HD project.

I am broadly happy with my FS700. It allows me to use all my EF lenses - about 7 or 8 of them - with both the Speedbooster and standard (v3) Metabones adapters. I also have the Sony power-zoom 18-200 for the occasional use when autofocus and versatile focal length is needed. I use a combination of 25P, 50P, Slow & Quick and 200fps Super Slo mo, regularly changing between these modes to suit. I also record audio internally using the XLR audio inputs for a boom or radio mics for most jobs. I am also pretty happy with the AVCHD internal recording on the FS700. For my needs it's fine, my clients never complain anyway. So shooting 10-bit will be nice, but it's the (compressed) 4K ability that I want the most. Although I occasionally do green-screen work, so 10-bit would be nice at that stage.

My FS700 rig works for me pretty well, for most situations I don't need to change it. I use the same configuration on my shoulder, on a tripod or on a slider. It's front heavy admittedly, but the front handle I have added allows me to hold it on my shoulder for a reasonable amount of time fairly comfortably. One thing that really helped was adding the optional wired remote control to the Kinotehnik viewfinder. I have positioned this where my left thumb naturally rests when holding the front-left handle, and the remote control allows me to punch-in for focus and switch focus-aid/zebras on and off without moving my hand (my left hand can also focus the lens at the same time). So my point is I'm comfortable with my gear, and when time is precious this is important. By the way I use the Swit batteries that have an external DC port, I use this to power the viewfinder which is convenient.

So my impending choice is whether to sell and replace my FS700 with a FS7, or keep the FS700 and buy a 7Q+. The Shogun option is parked for now, as it's too much of an unknown whether it will eventually record from the raw output of the FS700.

Benefits of the FS7 are fairly obvious - I won't mention most of them here. The downsides are having to buy new memory cards - have you seen the price of the 128GB XQD cards? Makes the CD SSDs look great value! I currently use up to 2 x 64GB SD cards on any given shoot, so by moving to 4K with the FS7 I worked out I'd need a minimum of 6 x this amount (and only if I used long gop XAVC-L - more again if I used the intra XAVC). Therefore I would need to potentially purchase 6 x XQD cards, costing about £2500!!! I think I would just have to get used to laying off onto external drives on the go and re-use the same cards quicker! Also I would need to buy a heap of batteries for the FS7, as the many L Series batteries I currently own would be no good. So there goes another £1000 in batteries. But although I can keep and continue to use all my EF lenses the Metabones adapters have been modified for the FS7, so I'd need to buy the newer versions - another £800 for both! On the other hand I'd have a shiny new camera and a new warranty - not to mention I could record in compressed 4K 50P, something the 7Q+ cannot do yet.

If I went the route of buying the 7Q+ the main benefit is I get to continue to use my familiar camera without needing to buy all new camera batteries, lens adapters etc. I would place the 7Q+ on the back of the camera onto the rods (extended them beyond where they currently are) with a small ball mount. This would add some counterbalance to my rig as well, which wouldn't harm! I'd also have an external monitor and be able to do dual recording (internal and 7Q+ at the same time - good for safety). Downsides include another device in the chain that potentially can go wrong, extra time having to set-up and make sure additional batteries are charged and changed over as required. Plus no 4k 50p mode at present. Also because the 7Q+ only has ProRes HQ, which is 800mbps, then it needs even more storage requirements than when using the FS7. Moving from HD 25mbps AVCHD to 4K on the 7Q+ needs 32 x the amount of storage for the equivalent amount of time! So the equivalent of 128GB of HD recording onto SD cards equals 4TB of SSD space for 4K ProRes HQ! I think I would try to cope with 2TB (2 x 1TB drives, plus the 2 x 256gb drives that are currently free), but that adds £2000 to the cost (£4000 if I went for 4 x 1TB drives). One of my thoughts is to immediately convert the 4K ProRes HQ files to 4K ProRes LT files (or possibly even ProRes Proxy) for storage on the editing drives. Anyone got any thoughts on this? (I edit with Premiere CC).

So you can see it requires a lot of thought to decide which way to go, and I want to make a good decision, that will keep me sorted for a couple of years at least.

Anyway, for what it's worth here are few pics of my rig which you may find interesting. If you have any thoughts on my ramblings I'd be interested to hear your views! Thanks all.

Slide1.jpgSlide2.jpgSlide3.jpgSlide4.jpgSlide6.jpgSlide7.jpgSlide8.jpg
 
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I was contemplating the same issue (although for slightly different reasons) recently.

The reason for not selling the FS700 came down to that I realised that I could scrape everything I had and buy the FS7 but then media, batteries and the additional disk space of the footage would make it too expensive for me.

At the same time I could have bought the 7Q, but then I wouldn't have had the money for the FS700 codec and only one SSD.

So in the end I decided my needs were best served with a second, smaller camera. So I got myself an A7s.
 
Well, Convergent Design is running a special on its SSD's, is it not?

And one should probably go with the "lightest" of ProRes to save space.
 
I believe the offer with the 7Q+ is for 2 x 256GB SSDs for free. Which is great, they would make a spare buffer amount on top of 2 x 1TB drives.
The A7S is a good thought, by purchasing the 7Q+ I could then buy a A7S at a later stage and be able to use the 7Q+ with both cameras. More food for thought! Thanks for your comments.
 
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The internal recording of the FS700 is only 25mb/s AVCHD in 8-bit. If you purchase an Odyssey7Q+ and the FR RAW Record Option, this allows not only recording in RAW but also using the RAW to record in ProRes, which is 220mb/s and 10-bit. That is a vast improvement over the camera's internal recording. Currently the Odyssey7Q+ comes with two 256G Odyssey SSDs. In HD (which is all you can shoot on your FS700 straight) the SSDs can capture five hours of material at 24p. So this might be all you need to get started. To shoot high speed or RAW or 4K you will probably need greater capacity, but you can choose to add that over time.

I like the idea of mounting the Odyssey to rods on the back. Might I suggest you look at the Wooden Camera Recorder Slider, which I think is a very versatile rig that will do everything you wish.
 
Thanks Mitch. The Wooden Camera bracket looks good. I assume I could attach a Sony L battery plate to the rear of the Wooden Camera bracket to power the 7Q+? I'd rather stick to batteries I have plenty of. If so can you get a Sony L battery plate that takes 2 batteries? My thinking is 2 x NP-F770 baterries will be slimmer and less protruding on the rig (but provide more power together), than a single fat NP-F970 battery.
 
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There are two battery plates I know of made for the Odyssey that accept two Sony L-series batteries. One is from Nebtek and the other is from Hawk-Woods. The Hawk-Woods has the advantage of also including a P-Tap output from other accessories (it runs the two 7.2v batteries in series to give 14.4v. Not sure if the Nebtek is series or parallel). Neither of these plates is likely to mount directly to the Wooden Camera rig without you drilling a few holes, but I wouldn't think that to be too big a deal.
 
pythonman, I have a similar business as yours. Mostly lower budget corporate, some doc work for my local pbs station, probably 50-60% one man band. I've had the FS700 since it came out and have mostly been happy with it. I've thought about the FS7, but ended up getting a good deal on a used 7Q. I've never had clients complain about the quality of my video either, but having played with the 7Q for just a week, I can't imagine going back. Even in HD it is a significant improvement, and it's noticeable in compressed online video. Even with Youtube defaulting to 480, I can tell a difference in the footage vs internal. Not sure how it'd stack up against an FS7 at this point, but I've found it a worthwhile improvement to my FS700 for much less cost than a new cam.

I use a Zacuto EVF, and am hanging the 7Q off the back on a Noga arm. When it's on my shoulder, the 7Q is tucked up close behind, and then on a tripod I can adjust it for viewing. On the shoulder, the rig is now better balanced, but it's not quite right on the tripod yet (back heavy) I'm thinking of trying the Zacuto mini-baseplate like yours. With the EVF you'll have to run hdmi from the 7Q so you can use its overlays instead of the cameras--those will have to be turned off for clean video. I like the look of your top redrock handle--how is that attached? I can't quite make it out from the pics.
 
Great thread!

My setup is different than yours, but the uses are basically the same.

When I got the 7Q last spring, I had gotten the plate from westside AV, and was using swit 970 batteries. The first few days of shooting were good, but not long after, I would have the 7Q yell at me with yellow in power, and then not be able to record for a varied amount of time. Sometimes it was a few seconds, sometimes only swapping out the battery and putting in a new one, and then alternating.

I tried to trouble shoot with olof, as well as locally, but we weren't able to really find out the problem. At the time, I just dealt with it, and in the fall, picked up the a7s and wasn't really pushing 4k services.

So now rolls around the new year, some 4k projects I did brought new business, and I just had to do something about it the power. I ended up getting a movcam v-lock bracket for rods... but this whole thing just adds so much weight. I haven't been frequenting these forums of late, but now going through a number of threads, seems people are powering with the 970s perfectly fine. And now I am stumped. Something needs to be done, as my rig is far too heavy now, but I can't rely on the power issues I was having before.

Seeing Mitch's post about the Wooden Camera slider... that probably would have been a much better fit for me. The v-lock batteries I use have Dtap on them, and this week i've only been going through about 50% of the battery in a day's shooting.

Here is my preferred setup from last year:
IMG_0229.jpg

And here is how it is now:
IMGL7164.jpg


Anybody have any suggestions?



EDIT: just noticed another thread that seems to have similar issue. interesting.
 
llirik said:
Great thread!

My setup is different than yours, but the uses are basically the same.

When I got the 7Q last spring, I had gotten the plate from westside AV, and was using swit 970 batteries. The first few days of shooting were good, but not long after, I would have the 7Q yell at me with yellow in power, and then not be able to record for a varied amount of time. Sometimes it was a few seconds, sometimes only swapping out the battery and putting in a new one, and then alternating.

I tried to trouble shoot with olof, as well as locally, but we weren't able to really find out the problem. At the time, I just dealt with it, and in the fall, picked up the a7s and wasn't really pushing 4k services.

So now rolls around the new year, some 4k projects I did brought new business, and I just had to do something about it the power. I ended up getting a movcam v-lock bracket for rods... but this whole thing just adds so much weight. I haven't been frequenting these forums of late, but now going through a number of threads, seems people are powering with the 970s perfectly fine. And now I am stumped. Something needs to be done, as my rig is far too heavy now, but I can't rely on the power issues I was having before.

Seeing Mitch's post about the Wooden Camera slider... that probably would have been a much better fit for me. The v-lock batteries I use have Dtap on them, and this week i've only been going through about 50% of the battery in a day's shooting.

Here is my preferred setup from last year:


And here is how it is now:



Anybody have any suggestions?



EDIT: just noticed another thread that seems to have similar issue. interesting.
Click to expand...

A solution to the low voltage of L series batteries is to use BPU series like used in XDcam and the new FS7. The batteries available from Sony Swit and others are 14.8v batteries, I would suggest the 60 WH or bigger batteries for shooting 4K in the Odyssey.

The advantage over these batteries is the plates, batteries and chargers are cheaper and they are lighter than bricks. If you have an FS7 this is a natural way to go, but you may want to think about it even for the FS700.

Just a thought. The problem is that the Odyssey doing 4K or 4K RAW to ProRes and HFR uses a lot more power, as much as 20W, it used to use 12 W when recording HD. CD even reduces the brightness of the Odyssey screen if you have less than, 9V I think, when recording 4K RAW. Higher voltage means more watts available, that is why Bricks work so much better. The 7.4 V batts worked fine before the Odyssey started using more power.

I have these plates and batteries in stock. Anyone can contact me directly if you wish to discuss this solution. The BPU plates can be installed on my L series plates, so contact me if you would like to upgrade.
 
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