What do you think? Is the FS attractive to pro shooters, vs it’s big brother the F3? How about the inevitable AF100 comparison? Leave a comment below.

Posted by Matt Jeppsen  on  03/23  at  07:01 AM

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Thanks for this demo! Exciting camera. Great demo.

I wonder if we’ll ever have a more pro CODEC in this kind of form factor? (Not to even mention having one on a more pro, more expensive camera like the PMW-F3.)

The video looked awesome to me although I did note what I believe is 8bit banding at about 16:10, when the frame goes black. Does this camera output 10bit via HDMI out? That would be preferable for greenscreen work. I assume that HDMI out is uncompressed.

Posted by wsmith  on  03/23  at  07:16 AM

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Nope, I don’t see these level cameras offering a better codec in the near future. For the F3, IMHO XDCAM codec is fine for 95% of shooting situations, and there are tethered recording options for that niche 5%.

In the case of the FS100, I think AVCHD is also good enough for most situations, and again, you have a tethered 4:2:2 uncompressed option via the HDMI out. It’s 8-bit, by the way. But what do you expect for a sub-$6k camcorder? In the case of banding in this video, it’s anyone’s guess know how much is due to the record format and how much is due to the Vimeo conversion.

-MJ

Posted by Matt Jeppsen  on  03/23  at  07:24 AM

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Hi Matt,

We seem to be getting a lot of great improvements in quality for our money nowadays so why not expect that we should get 10bit, for 6k? One can hope, and expect.

I’m a fairly experienced pro compressionist for online delivery. Have done it for fairly visible companies. Including a very visible classical video label (before Youtube rendered me obsolete for short clips).

Some of their videos were old, archival broadcast programs and we didn’t want the compression to make the programs look any worse than they did on DVD, which in some cases was not good to begin with. I ran a dedicated server with a Helix server on it and compressed each sample to all major formats.

Over those years, I saw lots of things, artifacts, etc. but never banding.

Thanks.

Posted by wsmith  on  03/23  at  09:15 AM

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Matt,

I now see that the F3 does have 10bit external output. I’m still unclear on whether that requires the same, optional optional gizmo that outputs 4:4:4

Along with the camera reviewed here, we have heard about another less expensive model (? approx US 3,500)that is “dust and water resistant” but that imager is smaller, I think.

When it rains, it pours at Sony.

Meanwhile, at Canon, they apparently still believe the old adage: “The backs of the pioneers are filled with arrows.”

Posted by wsmith  on  03/24  at  07:40 AM

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I don’t think Sony is positioning this camera at the run-n-gun crowd; those shooters don’t really need shallow DOF. But this camera is very good in low light so maybe they wouldn’t have to put such a blinding light in peoples’ eyes.
What the run-n-gun crowd needs is an on-shoulder camera like this. But I guess all good things to those who wait. Runner-gunners would stand still for a minute to rejoice…

Posted by wsmith  on  03/27  at  06:22 PM

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Hi @Valeriu, there’s a link to that dvuser review by Nigel Cooper in my original post above, and I even commented on a few of his beefs with the camera.

Posted by Matt Jeppsen  on  03/27  at  07:44 PM

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