ReelFilmGeek
Well-known member
Nothing that the public knows about
there is a Sony live event on the 8th but it doesn't seem to be geared towards the cinema line
Sony Cinema Line & FX6
- Thread starter Teddy_Dem
- Start date
Nothing that the public knows about
there is a Sony live event on the 8th but it doesn't seem to be geared towards the cinema line
Stuart Mannion
Member
Oh I was hoping the were going to announce at IBC in a couple of days.
Perhaps I've only used crappy EVFs but in my experience a loupe on the LCD gives a better image than an EVF as well as being more flexible in terms of placement.
scorsesefan
Veteran
Point of contact. If something goes wrong with your lcd you've got a back up for monitoring.
morgan_moore
Major Contributor
Its a certain sort of shooter that doesnt understand that not being able to compose a shot in the sun is a deal breaker.
Samuel H
Major Contributor
A loupe is cheap. My external monitor was $300 and is pretty bright. It's not a matter of being able to frame in the sunlight, but of the EVF being integrated in the camera body. Which is, a I said, not a dealbreaker.
Stuart Mannion
Member
No viewfinder on the back is helpful on a small gimbal. I like the idea that everything (screen, loupe, XLRs) attaches to the top handle so it can all be removed quickly for the switch to gimbal.
joema
Active member
Starting at 06:27 in this video, a well-known reviewer mentioned this point yesterday: https://youtu.be/XSx0YBWwGfc?t=387
There's also the recent revelation by www.CineD.com that their FX9 only did 11.5 stops at s/n=2 on Imatest: https://www.cined.com/lab-test-sony-fx9-rolling-shutter-dynamic-range-latitude/
It's one thing if manufacturers don't limit features and performance of mirrorless cameras. But it's another thing if the upper-end cameras fail to perform or have unnecessary cost or complexity -- at the very time the mirrorless cameras are improving so much.
Maybe something went wrong during FX9 development, or they took an overly conventional approach that was not properly coordinated with developing mirrorless trends. A $2500 backpack to get SDI was OK in earlier years but when you can get 12-bit ProRes RAW via HDMI from several different mirrorless cameras, maybe the FX9 form factor needed a re-think.
It will be interesting to see how the FX6 stacks up in these areas.
scorsesefan
Veteran
If the fx6 has the same sensor as the fx9 it will have the same DR...
ahalpert
Major Contributor
More or less. Noise is introduced by the electronics in the signal processing pipeline, so it could have noisier circuits. It could also have lower standards of quality control for the semiconductors themselves.
Anyway, I'm not totally convinced that CineD tested it properly.
ahalpert
Major Contributor
I just close my eyes and use the Force.
joema
Active member
Correct, but we don't know the FX6 will have the same sensor. There were rumors and speculation it would, but we don't really know. Unless the previously-mentioned tests are flawed, if I were Sony I'd put out the best FX6 I could, even if it were better than the FX9, then do a FX9 Mark II with a revised sensor, using FX9 firmware updates as a bridge to that.
I'm happy Sony was so aggressive on the A7SIII, but this has exacerbated the comparison with the FX9, partially due to the FX9 shortcomings. Usually mirrorless cameras or DSLRs are developed in a different corporate group than pro video cameras, so maybe there was a coordination problem. There's a rumor that's how the Canon 5D Mark II video capability was developed; it was a different Canon division on a separate geographic island and the video camera managers didn't fully grasp it until too late. Plus it was less an issue then since there were no full-frame pro video cameras. Canon put "Reverie" on their web site because it didn't displace non-existent full-frame pro cameras. Today it's different.
With Panasonic, the S1H was closely aligned with VariCam, in fact the head of VariCam development came over to work on the S1H. He's done interviews about that. Panasonic's view is this is inevitable, better to cultivate new customers with the S1H who will later move up to VariCam.
With Canon the R5 has obviously been limited, and the new C-series are really good so there's less conflict.
With Sony we don't know exactly how it happened. But the FX9 smacks of old-school conventional thinking, maybe a protracted development timeline led by backward-looking managers. No touch screen, no DCI, no eye-detect AF, no full frame 4k/60, some of those fixed in the new 2.0 firmware. Combine that with a different team on the A7SIII worried about the S1H and empowered to act. This is just speculation.
The new 12-bit RAW-capable mirrorless cameras are great but they don't invalidate pro cameras -- assuming the pro cameras are developed by forward-thinking managers.
The above review hit the nail on the head -- a $2,500 large heavy packpack on the FX9 just to get SDI output seems out of touch with current trends and expectations.
If someone develops a good internal varible ND for mirrorless cameras, the pro cameras will be in real trouble.
scorsesefan
Veteran
My guess is they'll do what they did fs7>fs5. Same sensor than handicap the codecs/frame rate/data rate in some way.
G
Guest
Guest
Agreed, we are well on our way towards HDR. Anything less than 10bit in a prosumer or pro body is inexcusable.
S.Blanchardon
Well-known member
I just want to chime in to clarify a simple misconception and something false I've read many times on this thread :
1. A7SIII was developed by a different department than the one doing the Venice and FX9/6 at Sony. One is doing the photo cameras, the other one is doing the video cameras. I'm not saying they never interact together but it's a different set of engineers who develop the products for each branch.
2. A7SIII doesn't output 12bit Prores RAW. It outputs Sony's own flavor of 16bit linear RAW which is then recorded in 12 bit (Log) Prores RAW by the Ninja V. On Atomos website it is clearly stated that you can : "Capture up to 4.2K resolution at up to 59.94 frames per second". Also, I think I read here that since it is HDMI 2.1, it could output 4K 120fps RAW but that no recorder with HDMI 2.1 input were available at the moment (that would be fantastic if it could indeed)
Back to the FX6, I highly doubt it would have the A7SIII sensor, nor that it would be anything but a crippled FX9, like the FS5 was to the FS7. Maybe not so crippled though, because the one thing (actually 2 things) that the FS5 does better was outputting RAW without the XDCA extension AND being able to have 4K 120fps 4 seconds RAW burst like the FS700 has. So maybe, with a little luck, the FX6 was engineered the same way. I'm not holding my breath though. And Sony really needs to stop with those expensive, ugly and bulky add-ons from an other age. It's driving me crazy to still rely on add-ons in 2020.
1. A7SIII was developed by a different department than the one doing the Venice and FX9/6 at Sony. One is doing the photo cameras, the other one is doing the video cameras. I'm not saying they never interact together but it's a different set of engineers who develop the products for each branch.
2. A7SIII doesn't output 12bit Prores RAW. It outputs Sony's own flavor of 16bit linear RAW which is then recorded in 12 bit (Log) Prores RAW by the Ninja V. On Atomos website it is clearly stated that you can : "Capture up to 4.2K resolution at up to 59.94 frames per second". Also, I think I read here that since it is HDMI 2.1, it could output 4K 120fps RAW but that no recorder with HDMI 2.1 input were available at the moment (that would be fantastic if it could indeed)
Back to the FX6, I highly doubt it would have the A7SIII sensor, nor that it would be anything but a crippled FX9, like the FS5 was to the FS7. Maybe not so crippled though, because the one thing (actually 2 things) that the FS5 does better was outputting RAW without the XDCA extension AND being able to have 4K 120fps 4 seconds RAW burst like the FS700 has. So maybe, with a little luck, the FX6 was engineered the same way. I'm not holding my breath though. And Sony really needs to stop with those expensive, ugly and bulky add-ons from an other age. It's driving me crazy to still rely on add-ons in 2020.
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