ProVideo Coalition.com: Camera Log by Adam Wilt | Founder | Pro Cameras, HDV Camera, HD Camera, Sony, Panasonic, JVC, RED, Video Camera Reviews

While the two cameras are very different in overall packaging, they start with a common element: the lens. Aside from a differing handgrip placement, the lenses on the cameras are practically identical. In a similar fashion, the two cameras share the same EVF and LCD and show the same data on those displays. Let’s look at the lens and the displays first, then discuss the two camera bodies individually.

Zeiss 12x zoom

Both cameras use a 4.4-52.8mm zoom; the only difference is the longitudinal placement of the handgrip. On the Z7, it’s set back to balance the camera/lens package, while on the S270, it’s centered on the lens, as the main weight of the camera sits on the shoulder.

The lens has Sony’s best-in-the-business lens hood with integrated lens cap: two barn-door flaps that open and close at the flick of a switch. The lens hood bayonets in place, leaving the 72mm threads free for filters.

The focus ring works just like the one on the EX1. Slide it forwards, and it free-spins like any other servo focus ring. In this position, the lens may be manually or automatically focused, and the focusing scale marked on the lens barrel is irrelevant.

Slide the ring back, and it engages a calibrated focusing scale with hard stops at either end. While you’re still focusing by wire, focus tracks the focus ring precisely and repeatably, just as if the lens used a fully mechanical focus.

The Z7’s 12x lens with the focusing ring in the fully-manual position

The zoom ring is fully mechanical, just as on a broadcast zoom lens. A slide switch beneath the handgrip engages or disengages the zoom motor, which can zoom through the entire range in as little as 4 seconds or as long as a minute. While the minute-long zoom is admirably slow, the fastest speed of four seconds sometimes left me wishing for something swifter. Fortunately the manual zoom has a light but well-damped feel, so zooming by hand is quite practical at almost any speed you desire.

Aft of the zoom is a free-spinning servo control for the iris, similar to what you’d find on the Canon XH A1 or XH G1. While it lacks any calibrating marks or hard stops, it lets you manually vary the iris with greater control and more finesse than the typical thumbwheel used on most other HDV cameras.

A Digital Extender button, labeled L1, allows a 1.5x digital zoom—in 60i recording modes only. If digital zoom isn’t your cup of tea, the button can be assigned a different function in the menus.

The handgrip has a start/stop trigger on the back, a return-video button on the top, behind the zoom rocker, and an auto/manual iris selector switch and momentary auto-iris buttons in front of the rocker. These are all standard placements for these controls on ENG lenses, and they feel natural and normal on the S270. On the Z7, though, I found myself hunting for the iris controls on the left side of the camera body, where they normally reside on handycams; it took a little while to reset my brain to the more “professional” location of these controls on the smaller camera. The zoom rocker itself was smooth and provided good control.

The lens bayonets in place using a standard 1/3” lens mount with a robust locking collar:

Z7’s lens mount. Note the hot-shoe contacts, securing tab (upper left), and filter selector (upper right)

Hot-shoe contacts convey all data and control between lens and body (though older lenses with 12-pin data cables can also be mounted).

The lens-retaining ring has a securing tab: a small, spring-loaded lever that presses against the locking collar, which Sony quaintly recommends because:

While this is indeed a worthy sentiment, I found the securing tab made little difference in the force required to loosen the collar. The little tab is spring-loaded against the knurled collar and simply retracts if forced; compared to the simple friction of the locking collar clamping the lens in place, it’s an insignificant impediment.

Both cameras employ a four-position filter wheel behind the lens, with clear, 2-stop, 4-stop, and 6-stop ND filters. Having three choices of ND, each only two stops from the next, is a great benefit, since one can use the NDs for finer-grained exposure control, and thus choose the shooting aperture more precisely for optimum sharpness and depth of field control.

LCD and EVF Displays

The Z7’s LCD flips out laterally from the front of the carrying handle like the one on the HVR-Z1, and rotates 270 degrees from forward-facing to downwards-facing. Additionally, it can be flipped up only halfway and then rotated to face either left or right (albeit with its image on edge), a handy thing for close-quarters work when operating from beside the camera.

The S270’s LCD is mounted atop its ENG-style finder; when flipped up, it can be spun around to face forwards, back, or sideways (a great help for a focus-puller or soundman, as it’s not blocked by the operator’s head as on some other shoulder-mount cameras).

Both camera’s LCDs are 3.2 inches diagonally and are viewable in daylight. The LCD is a fine-pitch unit, 1920 pixels across (e.g., 640 RGB triads) by 480 tall, and it resolves about 300 TV lines / picture height in both directions.

The EVFs (the Z7’s at the rear, the S270’s in a side-mounted ENG-style housing) resolve about 350 TVl/ph, but look much sharper: they’re actually monochrome panels, backlit sequentially by R, G, and B LEDs. With no colored stripe mask or RGB dot pattern to break up the image, the EVF pictures look detailed beyond what the numbers suggest, though you can see a bit of a “rainbow effect” on fast-moving subjects or if you dart your eye around. The EVF has a monochrome mode for those who prefer it, but there is no gain in sharpness when viewing in B&W.

The EVF and LCD offer a peaking signal with three menu-selectable levels of intensity. Unlike the “binary”, now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t peaking on a Z1 or EX1, this signal looks to be more “analog” in nature, appearing gently on low-contrast edges and more vigorously on higher-contrast edges, so it tends to be more usable in lower-contrast situations.

Both EVF and LCD seem perfectly accurate vertically, showing 100% of the image height, but crop off perhaps a couple of percent on either side.

There is a focus-magnifying mode which zooms in 2x, but in common with other Sony HDV cams, it can only be used when you’re not rolling tape, and it magnifies the video outputs along with the finder. It’s useful for setups between shots, but it’s useless for fine-tuning while you’re recording.

I found the EVF suitable for most focusing tasks, which is not something I often admit to with Handycams; indeed, after a long evening of low-light documentary work, I found I’d nailed focus 9 times out of 10, and the 10th time I was almost there. By comparison, while the EX1’s LCD is better for focusing, its EVF is quite a bit worse, and no other HDV camera I’ve used has a superior EVF for focusing purposes.

Sony has once again topped themselves when it comes to viewfinder data displays, improving on the system used on the HVR-V1. You can see all shooting parameters such as focus, aperture, gain, and shutter speed, and see them in both manual and automatic operation (in which case an “A” in an arrow sits beside the parameter). Shooting modes other than 60i have a status icon; you can see how much ND filtration is dialed in; your current zebra setting is shown. Audio level meters (including the clipping point) keep you on top of your sound, and icons show whether any of the channels are manually controlled. An exposure histogram shows a red line where the average exposure value is found, and an amber line indicates where the zebra occurs: you have little excuse for blown exposure with this level of information available.

LCD, showing all data. Note that iris is on auto, the battery is good for 226 more minutes, channel 1’s audio is manually controlled; zebra is at 100%, we’re using ND filter 3; daylight balance; 24p recorded as 1080i HDV; and the tilt meter on the left says the camera is level

The cameras also offer a “tilt meter”: a graphical bubble level where a sliding white box indicates lateral tilt. Silly? I thought so at first, but I soon came to value it highly, and I now miss it on other cameras; I found it very helpful in avoiding inadvertent dutch angles, and it also served as a double-check when leveling a tripod head.

There is, of course, a whole range of safe action markers, cropping markers, center markers, and rule-of-thirds markers, all of which (like most of the data displays) can be individually turned on or off. The entire display can be decluttered at the press of a button for unobstructed framing and composition purposes.