Saw the Sony F55 yesterday

K

Ken Willinger

Had a chance to get some hands on time with the new Sony F55 digital large sensor camera yesterday. They begin shipping sometime in February. With the body alone coming in at about $30K, this will not be an inexpensive build out. But it certainly will give Red Epic and Arri Alexa a run for the money. Some of the nice features are the global shutter and internal ND filters (with IR). The camera natively is 1250 ISO. Wow. They claim 14 stops of dynamic range and the footage I saw looked great, with the blacks very clean. Having taken a page right out of the Red Epic handbook, the camera is completely modular. So there is flexibility to build it in many configurations i.e. doc style, full feature film build out etc. And the lens mounts are also interchangeable (though it comes with a PL mount), almost any lens can be mounted on the camera. They have a mount for Canon FD! (as does my Red Epic X). So I can use the great set of cinevised Canon FD lenses I have. Start buying those now as they are inexpensive. The price on good Canon FD glass is going to skyrocket.
Overall this is a good looking addition to the large sensor cameras available on the market today. And soon enough it will be flavor of the month for producers ; ) Be sure that other manufacturers will be showing more 4K cameras at NAB 2013. The future is here.
 
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I feel pretty much the way you do regarding the look of the Sony cameras. The video that they showed at this event didn't have the blown highlights you saw, so I'm wondering if there was an issue with either conversion, or projector when you saw it, but I agree that Sony does have an inherently video look. Back in the day I always prefered Ikegami broadcast cameras to the Sonys because of that. The colors always looked electric to me whereas the Ikegamis had a more organic feel in their coloremitry.

Though the cameras will be shipping in the next few weeks, the firmware is still not complete (according to the Sony guy at the event) and there will be updates. They did not have the OLED viewfinder at this event either, claiming it went down just before the show. I'm with you on the basic Sony viewfinder... I don't like it. I do think this camera will be a great tool for many productions, and may well find its way into the television drama market, though it will be tough to knock the Alexa off its current perch. Alexa makes wonderful images.

I've been a Red owner from the beginning and believe Red shot itself in the foot on the early releases, gaining a bad reputation for an unreliable camera. They released it too early and though claiming it was a beta release, which it was, people used it in situations it just wasn't ready for. My experience hasn't been bad, even with Red One. And the Epic X has been rock solid. I've used it on many productions, often just delivering ProRes 422HQ from a Pix240 mounted on the camera (of course using a LUT). R3D has been an issue with some clients so I'm glad there are many manufacturers of offboard recorders now. Though the fan noise between takes is an issue on Epic that hopefully will be dealt with in the next firmware update.

I'm a big fan of FD glass and have used it on a few jobs now with the Epic. I cinevised a 20mm 2.8, a 35mm 2.0, a 55mm 1.2 and an 85mm 1.8. And there are more that I haven't cinevised but use. This was top quality professional glass back in the 70's that most thought was forever done, and now can be purchased at bargain prices. But my guess is it will become popular again. The Contax Zeiss lenses also are pretty sweet but have become very pricey now. The game keeps changing!

One more pro to the F5 and F55 is the ability to go raw or film various levels of the Sony codecs, or even proxies at the same time on the same card (not implemented in the current firmware). Very useful.
 
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