122 Slides on the Sony PXW-FS7

Adam Wilt

10 years ago

The Sony PXW-FS7 “Vérité”, being announced at IBC as I post this, is a large-single-sensor camera aimed specifically at shoulder-mounted run’n’gun work: things like documentary shooting, news, direct cinema, and (shudder) “reality TV”. It has a compact body, an innovative “SmartGrip” on a positionable arm, and a big LCD/EVF on a flexible mounting system, all designed so you can shoot stable handheld footage without having to first build a rig. (You can read the press release or view the brochure over on Cinema5D.com.)

The FS7 uses E-mount lenses (or just about any other glass in the world via adapters), records 8-bit MPEG2 or 10-bit XAVC — both I-frame and long-GOP — on XQD cards, and runs nearly four hours on a BP-U60T battery carried internally (though the camera will ship with the smaller, 1-hour BP-U30). The Vérité captures HD and QHD (3840×2160) at up to 60fps, plus HD slo-mo at up to 180fps. It can be run in full manual mode, in full-auto (with electronically-coupled E-mount lenses), or anything in between. You can shoot in standard Rec.709-type gammas, eight different hypergammas, or S-Log3 for maximum gradability.

It’s supposed to ship by early November for a street price around US$8,000. A docking adapter should come by the end of the year to provide additional functionality, like ProRes recording, raw output, and V-mount battery use; the camera plus adapter should be under $10,000.

Sony sent me a pre-production prototype last Tuesday, and I’ve posted a hands-on preview over at DVInfo.net.

Senior Product Manager Juan Martinez also shared an “Initial Product Information” presentation, which he surprisingly said I could publish… after 3AM EST September 12, the moment when the Vérité was to be revealed. “Some specifications may change”, he warns, but overall it’s a good overview of the camera, what it can do, and how Sony sees it stacking up against the competition.

Here it is.