FS7: New Sony F7 XDCAM 4K Super 35mm Camcorder

I am continually amazed by the poor engineering and lack of forethought that goes into prosumer devices from Sony. The VG series of HD cams are playtoys, with "features" that shouldn't ever have made it to consumerism, at any level. The tripod mount on the VG-10 was criminally wrong and inadequate. Even a cheap toy is designed better than that. And now we have this contraption Sony is selling as a handgrip for the FS7. Adam Wilt is totally correct when he criticized the native balance that this design doesn't have. I think Sony must have a bunch of designers, who aren't shooters. And for a company as large and influential as this, it's downright appalling. They continue to demonstrate inadequate designs, not well thought out; and, simply knee jerk reaction to public commentary.
 
cuervo said:
I am continually amazed by the poor engineering and lack of forethought that goes into prosumer devices from Sony. The VG series of HD cams are playtoys, with "features" that shouldn't ever have made it to consumerism, at any level. The tripod mount on the VG-10 was criminally wrong and inadequate. Even a cheap toy is designed better than that. And now we have this contraption Sony is selling as a handgrip for the FS7. Adam Wilt is totally correct when he criticized the native balance that this design doesn't have. I think Sony must have a bunch of designers, who aren't shooters. And for a company as large and influential as this, it's downright appalling. They continue to demonstrate inadequate designs, not well thought out; and, simply knee jerk reaction to public commentary.
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You must have forgotten to mention how sony burned your home and kidnapped your children. Jeez, it's just a camera, if you like it buy it if not don't go on an overblown tirade about it.

I finally got to handle one at abel last night at the SMPTE meeting, and overall it's plenty more thought out than a lot of other cameras out there.

The two main things that, as a C100 shooter, have me on the fence: size, and weight. I've become spoiled by the C100's size and mass, and the fs7 is right around twice the size and weight. It's not bad by any means, considering beasts like the URSA.

My first impression when looking at it was: That's a mess of buttons! But a short look around and things start to make sense, and i'm known to love many a button! I do think it could have been cleaned up/consolidated/organized a bit better, but that's a first impression, cold change after handling it for a time

Juan from sony confirmed that the usb port on the front has power so you can power some 5v stuff off it, but no word on what the amperage is, probably 500ma.

Finally, someone figured out how to solve the problem of HDMI: they recessed the port so that there is inherent strain relief.

the handgrip isn't perfect, but it's a darn treat compared to anything else in this range, my main concern is that it doesn't appear to have a nice way of folding in for storage.

i'm still not sold on qxd, i'm sure it'll be just fine, but i'm turned off by the connection, which has 3 decent size holes for dirt to get into. Not that you should have these things anywhere near dirt, but if these things are being billed as professional use, they should be able to handle the occasional slip.

Image looked nice, didn't have too much time to tinker, but iso8000 certainly wasn't sparkling clean, but not a mess either.(i'm not versed in the fs700 or f5, so i hold no prior experiences/expectations on the noise front.

For $8000..... that's a lot of camera. Tempting for sure.
 
Given the price point and features there's only so much a manufacture can do. They could of course have made the camera twice as expensive and made a lot of things better.
 
Darren-- We went through this one last night with Juan about the XQD connectors. Take a look at an SxS card-- the entire connector port is open so has the same chance of foreign material as XQD.

I agree with Adam Wilt's critique of position of hand grip. And I am certain that we will see third party modifications.

Juan unfortunately didn't have the extension unit last night so we really couldn't feel how the camera balanced with some counterweight on the back. That also meant we couldn't look at Raw footage via the 7Q.

Now where I think Sony may be making a bit of a marketing gaffe is in a slide that just highlights XAVC-L (and I'll pass this along via the bat phone connection to Sony). Camera has XAVC-I, XAVC-L and MPEG2. I think that merely touting the inclusion of XAVC-L might lead some to think that it only has the long gop codec.

Ned
 
I put the FS7 on my shoulder today at the Profusion show in Toronto. It felt great. Its front heavy with a large lense (had a Sony Cine lens on it) but I really liked the feel. The top handle and finish feel better than that C300 to me and it didn't seem 'plasticky'. It looked and felt just like the EX series to me which were great to me. I love buttons instead of menu to access many common functions. The audio pots are in the rights spot (not on the highest frontal point of the camera like Canon C300). The handle felt nice and solid. I like that it is more than just a shoe connection to hold it together and the cabling seems tidy. Overall a nice sleak package. I wish they had the Viewfinder on the EVF to see how it fit.

Going to an exposing for Slog3 4hr seminar tomorrow morning put on by Alister Chapman. Should be good. I'm really excited for this camera. I really like the ability to use LUTs and even burn them in to the record for those quick turn around projects (min colour grading) that I still want to use maximum DR of SLOG 3.
 
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There's really no magic to exposing slogs except knowing how values are mapped for the various versions of slog.

Big circle of confusion comes when using a LUT on top of log gamma and then exposing because you need to know new grey and white point mapped values.

Users of slog3 do tend to notice more noise, but this is also related to the fact that on F5/55 in CineEI mode Noise Reduction is disabled so we'll see what the story is with NR on the F7s..
 
new remote record trigger for cinegears supports F7
Protector_preview.jpg
 
starcentral said:
There's really no magic to exposing slogs except knowing how values are mapped for the various versions of slog.

Big circle of confusion comes when using a LUT on top of log gamma and then exposing because you need to know new grey and white point mapped values.

Users of slog3 do tend to notice more noise, but this is also related to the fact that on F5/55 in CineEI mode Noise Reduction is disabled so we'll see what the story is with NR on the F7s..
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Thanks. So, if you are recording to S-log but monitoring with LUT (let's say REC709), do you expose on the monitor as though it's REC709?
 
starcentral said:
There's really no magic to exposing slogs except knowing how values are mapped for the various versions of slog.
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Of course its not magic but the FS7 will be my first Slog camera so might as well get a numbers breakdown from Allister Chapman while the show is in town. I hear SLog 3 is much easier to deal with than Slog2 colour wise. Even in the presentation on the FS7 today they emphasized that overexposing skin town does weird things so nail it proper.
 
Lenilenapi said:
Does the Slog3 to 709 LUT also have noise reduction disabled?
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On the F5/F55 it wasn't the LUT that removed noise reduction, it was the fact that when the camera is in CineEI mode many features are disabled like matrix, NR, etc.. to provide more of a pure signal intended for post production. In the next firmware release however I hear they are planning to bring NR back. I do know that A7S users also find slog3 noisier than is acceptable, it could have lots to do with their exposure levels that is causing this, but I too have noticed it in projects I shot with the F55 in slog3 and actually light my shadows a few stops below middle grey and they had unacceptable noise to me. This could have been because NR was disabled in CineEI mode.. but we'll see with the next firmware release.

skimmel said:
Thanks. So, if you are recording to S-log but monitoring with LUT (let's say REC709), do you expose on the monitor as though it's REC709?
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With the REC709(800%) LUT you can use normal levels like 45% for your 18% grey card, and 89% for your 90% white reflectance card. The problem arrises when using any other LUT, and since Sony included 4 default LUTs in the F5/F55 there was no mention of the new remapped values causing a stir yet again on the Sony community forums between many individuals. Alister made a video to show there is no issue at hand, but he used the REC709(800) LUT to switch it on and off and show that 32% grey would be 45% grey, etc.. which made it seem as if there was no issue but there is when you use any other LUT which was the point made by Doug from Vortex who first raised it as a problem.

RatLabProductions said:
Of course its not magic but the FS7 will be my first Slog camera so might as well get a numbers breakdown from Allister Chapman while the show is in town. I hear SLog 3 is much easier to deal with than Slog2 colour wise. Even in the presentation on the FS7 today they emphasized that overexposing skin town does weird things so nail it proper.
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For quick reference these are the mapped values for slog2 and slog3:

ScreenShot2014-08-21at55735PM_zps0aed166b.png


I also wrote a comprehensive guide on exposure you might enjoy as a further reference if you have not already had a chance to download a free copy, all these bits discussed here are covered in good detail. I partially wrote this because the same questions kept coming up over and over again, and I also helped to straighten out the LUT for exposure debacle on the Sony forums between various parties so I felt it made sense to just capture it all in one cohesive document: www.cinetiny.com/exposeguide
 
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RatLabProductions said:
I really like the ability to use LUTs and even burn them in to the record for those quick turn around projects (min colour grading) that I still want to use maximum DR of SLOG 3.
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Isn't that FS7 will only enable LUT burn in over SDI output? (or their extension with ProRes) LUT monitoring only and no internal burn in?
 
pretty sure someone confirmed LUTs can be baked in. Really, this camera is the F5/F55 for 1/2 to 1/3 the price minus a few bells and whistles.

I'm glad to have the F55, but really, the FS7 would likely deliver on 95% of the projects I work on. I mainly got the F55 for feature film work and 4K RAW so I wouldn't have to go the RED route.. but for anything less than RAW (which even the F7S can do now) this is a STEAL and I can't believe it's only $8000. Add a $500 PL mount to E mount and what else do you need?
 
starcentral said:
pretty sure someone confirmed LUTs can be baked in. Really, this camera is the F5/F55 for 1/2 to 1/3 the price minus a few bells and whistles.

I'm glad to have the F55, but really, the FS7 would likely deliver on 95% of the projects I work on. I mainly got the F55 for feature film work and 4K RAW so I wouldn't have to go the RED route.. but for anything less than RAW (which even the F7S can do now) this is a STEAL and I can't believe it's only $8000. Add a $500 PL mount to E mount and what else do you need?
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That's exactly what I think: it's a STEAL. They could easily sell it for half a price more and it would still sell extremely well (for it's form factor, weather sealing etc.). Make me forget about my thoughts to get Scarlet Dragon... ;)
Would you be able to show some of the graded examples? (from that feature film that you're working on with RAW)
 
starcentral said:
Really, this camera is the F5/F55 for 1/2 to 1/3 the price minus a few bells and whistles.

I'm glad to have the F55, but really, the FS7 would likely deliver on 95% of the projects I work on. I mainly got the F55 for feature film work and 4K RAW so I wouldn't have to go the RED route.. but for anything less than RAW (which even the F7S can do now) this is a STEAL and I can't believe it's only $8000. Add a $500 PL mount to E mount and what else do you need?
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Yes agree. Is very cheap. If it only had mojo...
 
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