Lots of mystery surrounding this. At first glance it may sound like a new “F” camera, maybe an F3 update or replacement. It could also be a companion camera to the F65 perhaps. But then you also have to consider that Sony have promised to reveal details of the 4k recorder and firmware for the FS700 some time soon, so maybe it’s the FS4K (made up name) recorder? Who knows? Well, I know some things that I can’t discuss, if it is one of the things I know about then it is extremely exciting as it will surprise you. Sony have some very impressive things in development that they believe are so significant that they have been extremely secretive about them. Even within Sony only a select handful know all the details. I don’t know the full story, but what I have heard is very exciting indeed and earlier than expected. Roll on the 30th of October when all will be revealed!

Just a reminder that I’m running a morning and afternoon PMW-200 workshop at D+P in Dublin tomorrow. The morning session starts at 10am and the afternoon at 2pm. More details are here: http://camerakit.ie/masterclass.asp

DONT PANIC! I have not gone mad, I have no intention of replacing my lovely Vinten tripods and nor do I wish to use this ridiculously cheap Chinese tripod to replace the pro tripods I normally use. But I have the need for a tripod that is smaller and lighter than the ones I currently use, a tripod that is in effect “disposable” in so much as I can take it on an overseas shoot and leave it behind if I need to. For example when I go to Norway for the Northern Lights shoots we travel by snow scooter and anything I can do to reduce the weight and bulk of the kit the better, so this tripod may end up spending the winter in Norway while I travel back and forwards between December and March. I picked it up in Hong Kong, it cost me about £100 GBP. You can get them on ebay and all over the place.

For 100 quid this is actually rather impressive. It’s rated for a payload up to 7kg, but in my opinion it’s only really suitable for about 2.5kg, but that makes it suitable for a “naked” FS100, FS700 or EX1/PMW-200. It’s almost entirely made from aluminium, there is very little plastic. It appears reasonably well made and is surprisingly sturdy. The legs are 3 stage alloy legs that extend to about 1.6m, there are two versions of the legs, mine are the short version. There is a fixed mid level spreader that cannot be removed or adjusted, but it works quite well. The ends of the legs just have a simple rubber cap on the end, no spikes or twin spikes so fitting a floor spreader might be difficult. A simple twist lock lever locks each stage of the legs. When I purchased my tripod one of these twist locks did not tighten enough to securely lock the legs, but this was cured in about 15 seconds by removing a little plastic cover from the lever, removing a screw and rotating the leaver 1/5th of a turn on it’s spigot and replacing the screw. At the top of the legs there is a 60mm bowl. This is a non-standard size, so most other tripod heads won’t work with these legs.

The tripod head as a 60mm ball and is solidly constructed, it even has a fixed rate counterbalance spring. There is a drag adjustment for tilt, but not for pan.  The tilt and pan action is smooth and fluid and the drag levels reasonable for smaller cameras. In addition you can lock both the pan and tilt axis. The camera is attached to the tripod head via a sliding quick release plate, it’s even supplied with both 1/4″ and 3/8″ screws! The pan bar is telescopic and extends but the extension part is a little loose on the fixed part and this can introduce a bit of slop and small jerks to you otherwise smooth camera moves.

Frankly I’m amazed by this tripod. If your in the market for something very cheap, maybe for a small “B” camera or as a backup you really should consider this one. For the money, it appears to be one hell of a tripod. It isn’t in the same class as a Vinten, Miller, Sachtler etc and I have no idea how long it will last, but it’s a lot better than any other £100 tripod that I’ve seen previously.

I’m running a FS700 workshop in Helsinki on Wednesday the 10th of October. Starting at 10am we will be taking an in depth look at the FS700, how to fine tune it and how to shoot super slow mo with it. The event will be held at Suomilammi Oy, Sirrikuja 4F, 00940 Helsinki.

I have been looking at some other picture profiles claiming to offer a log style curve or the maximum dynamic range from the camera. One in particular caught my eye as the creator advocates the use of a very high black level setting. Normally the black level setting does nothing more than set the zero reference point (called the pedestal) for the black level, it does not  normally affect dynamic range. So I decided to investigate the claim that a high black level on a FS700 improves shadow performance, at the same time coming up with my own settings for maximum dynamic range.

To establish whether the black level setting made any difference to the dynamic range I performed a very simple test using a greyscale chart and a waveform monitor. I exposed the grey scale so that one of the mid scale grey bars was just fractionally below the zero, black level on the waveform monitor. Now, IF the black level is changing the dynamic range, then raising the black level should allow me to bring that now just invisible grey scale bar back up above the black level so that I can see it on the waveform monitor as a discreet bar. Well, it didn’t. The overall black level comes up as expected, but the grey bar does not make an appearance, it stays firmly below the black level. This proves that the black level control is actually working as expected, i.e. just changing the zero point. Now you can decrease the dynamic range by using a high negative value as this will push dark parts of the scene into clipping, but raising the level does nothing more than raising the black pedestal level. Raising the pedestal level may make the image look flatter on a monitor because it will look greyer due to blacks that no longer look black on the monitor, but the dynamic range is not in fact being increased and your wasting recording data.

The next thing to look at is the Black Gamma setting. Now as this is a gain setting (as opposed to just a level setting) I did expect to see some changes in dynamic range. What’s interesting with this setting is that it operates over 3 ranges, low, mid and high. High range operates over the greatest range, but has the least effect on deep shadows. Low Range has the greatest effect on deep shadows and by using Low Range and the maximum +7 level setting I was able to gain almost a half stop increase in low end dynamic range. +7 with the High range setting made almost no difference to the darkest parts of the image. From previous testing and experimentation I know that cinegamma 4 offers the greatest dynamic range, so by combining Cinegamma 4 with black gamma, low range at +7, I believe you are getting the absolute maximum dynamic range from the camera. You should note that set like this the camera records to 109%.

I have created a complete flat look, maximum dynamic range picture profile for the FS700 and you can find the settings by clicking here.

Well this didn’t really start as a review project, but as I spent a few days shooting with an EA50 in Hong Kong and everyone want’s to know what it is like, I thought I should write down my thoughts in a little more depth.

 First of all what is the EA50? Well it’s a shoulder mount camcorder that uses the APS-C sized sensor from a stills photo camera, that shoots video and takes photos. It records on to a single SD card or memory stick as well as an optional 128gb flash memory unit (FMU). The recordings are encoded using now ubiquitous AVCHD codec at up to 24Mb/s.

Now while I and Sony call it a shoulder mount camera I think you do have to differentiate between the EA50 and an old school full size broadcast camera. A heavy old school camera normally sits completely on your shoulder, some of the camera sticking out behind you, some in front and this gives the camera excellent balance and stability. All the weight, or at least 80% is supported by your shoulder. The EA50 is different. For a start the camera is actually quite compact, it looks bigger in photos than it is in real life. On the rear of the camera there is an extending shoulder pad, that when in the extended position sits on the users shoulder. This supports the rear end of the camera, but most of the weight is forwards of your shoulder so your left hand and arm end up supporting a significant portion of the weight. Fortunately the camera itself is not heavy, but put a heavy lens on the camera and it will get tiring to use for long periods. There are a couple of 1/4” screw holes on the top of the shoulder pad, so it would be quite easy to construct a counterbalance bracket if you are going to do a lot of shoulder mount work. In many respects holding the EA-50 on my shoulder reminds me of the PMW-EX3. It is more stable than a handycam style camera and it is quite nice to use, but it isn’t really a true shoulder mount camera. The plus side of this is that because it is quite light you can still easily use it as a handycam for lower level shots with ease and you don’t need a particularly big or heavy tripod which helps keep the budget under control.

The large viewfinder is again very similar to the one on the PMW-EX3. It has a very high resolution LCD with excellent, accurate colour reproduction so judging exposure and colour balance is easy. Resolution is good, but for accurate focussing I found that I needed to use the colour peaking function to accentuate when things were in or out of focus.

I think one of the biggest surprises with this camera for me is the build quality. Lets face it, this is a low cost camcorder, but you know what, it really doesn’t feel low cost. It is made primarily of plastic, but it’s a really nice plastic that feels like it will take the bumps on knocks that come from professional use. The handle is robust and feels solid in your hand and the switches, buttons and knobs all feel like that come from a more expensive camcorder. Talking of which, there are conventional pro camcorder style switches for white balance and gain as well as rotary controls for the audio record levels. This really is a pro camcorder and it feels and behaves like one.

The NEX-EA50 uses Sony’s now familiar E-Mount for it’s lens. The beauty of this mount is that the distance between the mount face and the sensor itself is very short. As a result it’s easy to add adapters to go from the E-Mount fitting to almost any other lens fitting you desire. This opens up a massive range of lens possibilities, via the La-EA2 you can use Sony’s Alpha lenses, via a metabones adapter you can use Canon EF lenses, via a MTF Nikon adapter you can use…. err… well… Nikon lenses and so on. So lots and lots of lens choices from ebay DSLR lenses to PL Mount Ultra Primes.

The camera is supplied with the new Sony 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 E-Mount power zoom lens ( SELP18200 ) In Asia there is also the option to buy the camera with the non servo 18-200mm lens. The power zoom allows you to zoom in and out using a zoom rocker built in to the camera. The power zoom is based on the 18-200mm stills lens found on the FS100 and FS700. It has optical image stabilization and can operate in auto focus or manual focus modes. The fastest zoom speed is a little slow and the lens does extend as you zoom, so adding a matte box would be difficult. The pre-production unit I played with had a tendency to shift the image left and right as you alternated between zooming in and zooming out and if you used manual focus there would be some small shifts in the focus through the zoom range. I’ve had quite a few discussions with Sony about this lens and I think you do need to be realistic. This lens has been built to meet the demand from end users for a cheap servo zoom for large sensor cameras. A PL mount servo zoom lens will cost you around $50K (and is much bigger and heavier), this lens is about 1/48th of that price, it’s a bargain and I want one for my FS700. Production units should have near zero image shift and the focus shifts should be minimal, but don’t expect then to be zero. The best way to use this lens while zooming is with the auto focus switched on. Use it like this and provided the camera stays focussed on the same target, you won’t see any focus shifts as you zoom. Just don’t expect to be able to zoom in and out with the lens wide open and not see any changes in the image.

Zoom without a zoom! The EA50 also has the ability to electronically zoom in and out even with a fixed focal length lens. This option is selected in the camera menu and gives a 2x zoom controlled by the zoom rocker. It’s a really useful feature that allows you some flexibility in framing when using a non servo zoom. I didn’t notice any appreciable loss in image quality when I used this function and the zooms were smooth and easy to control.

In use, shooting around Hong Kong thanks largely to the servo zoom the EA50 did feel more like a traditional news camcorder than a big sensor camera. The ability to zoom in and out to re-frame shots quickly and simply, as well as using the zoom during a shot was nice. Although looking back through the footage I think I did overuse the zoom, probably because I’ve been shooting with prime lenses so much lately that I got a bit carried away having a servo zoom again! This isn’t a fast lens at f3.5 – f6.3 so don’t expect super shallow depth of field, especially at the wide end. It’s reasonably sharp and contrast is pretty good considering the 10x zoom range. A good prime lens will easily out perform the zoom but, for versatility and quick re-framing etc it’s hard to better. My biggest gripe is the way the focus ring works, it appears to have two speeds, at first the focus changes rapidly and then as you fine tune the focus the change in focus requires a lot more twisting of the focus ring and I find this tricky as there is also some lag in the lenses response to your focus input. Despite its little annoyances the lens is overall pretty good and it does make the EA50 very useable for run and gun. As I said I want to get one of these lenses for my FS700 as soon as possible.

The camera menus have the same layout and style as the FS100 and FS700, so clean and simple and easy enough to find your way around. There are no slow motion or timelapse options on the EA50, but you can shoot at 50p/60p and then slow things down in post to 25p/30p if you need slow mo. For time-lapse, just let the camera roll and speed it up in post. It’s not as though AVCHD files take up a lot of storage space and SD cards are cheap as chips. You can have full manual control over exposure, there is a large thumb wheel at the front of the camera body to control the aperture and buttons that select the auto/manual modes for each of the shutter, iris, and gain functions. In addition there is a “full auto” switch that puts everything to automatic for simple point and shoot filming. As well as video the EA50 can also take still photographs, but you do have to switch between stills photo mode and video mode depending on which you want, so no taking photos while your shooting video. The EA50 has the full suite of picture profile options including adjustable colour, detail and gamma settings. It uses the cinematone gammas found on the FS100 if you want a more filmic look.

There are XLR audio inputs with phantom power and lots of outputs including HDMI, component and composite, so something there for everyone. I really don’t think you can complain too much about not having HDSDI at this price point.

But what about the image quality? Well as this camera is using an APS-C sensor designed for stills it isn’t as optimized for video as a dedicated video camera like the FS100 or FS700. However the pictures are pretty good. They are a little softer than I get from my FS700 but in a not unpleasant way. They don’t look blurred or anything like that, they just lack that final crispness that makes the FS700 look so nice. The images are well rounded, they don’t look over enhanced or electronic and colour reproduction is good and accurate. I did find the images to be more contrasty than I’ve become used to recently with blacks and deep shadows looking just a tiny bit crushed. It handled bright skies very well but did struggle a little with very high latitude scenes. Being a DSLR sensor I did expect to see evidence of aliasing and other jaggies, but I was pleasantly surprised by how well controlled this were. I didn’t find any shots that I could do and there are no nasty surprises in the rushes I shot. You can see a few jaggies here and there and a little bit of aliasing every now and again, but overall for a stills sensor I think the EA50 does a pretty good job as a video camera. I did do some shooting at night at the Monk Kok ladies market and on the waterfront at Kowloon and there is quite a difference in sensitivity between the EA50 and a dedicated video large sensor camera like the FS100, the EA50 is much less sensitive. But don’t panic, it’s no worse than most video cameras with normal sized sensors, I felt it actually had similar sensitivity to the Sony PMW-200, so that puts about 1.5 stops slower than an FS100.

So what do i think overall? Actually I’m quite impressed. Would I buy one? No, I would not, but then I already have a FS700 and PMW-F3. What I do think is that it offers a very good price/performance ratio in an interesting form factor. I can see this camera being very popular for wedding videographers, schools and other training organizations. In the right hands this camera will produce nice pictures, pictures that are certainly good enough for online HD videos and with careful use you could even shoot a film that would hold up to projection on a big screen. If you need to have a low cost, versatile camera that looks like a pro camera and you want shallow depth of field the EA50 has to be considered.

I’ve created a picture profile for my friends in Asia. This gives accurate but vivid colour reproduction with a nice contrasty look. It uses Hypergamm 3 so handles highlights and over exposure well, but by using some black gamma tweaks the picture still has a nice rich look. You’ll find the full details by clicking here.

Been out and about in Hong Kong shooting with a pre-production EA50 and I really quite like it. It is not an FS700 or FS100, the image quality is not quite that good.

The pictures are contrasty and it’s not as sensitive. It’s really nice to have the same familiar menu’s as the FS100 including the same picture profiles so you can dial in a look to suit your needs. The servo zoom is OK. It’s not perfect, there is a picture shift when you change zoom direction and some small focus shifts (these should be significantly reduced in production units).

It was really nice to have a functioning zoom on a big sensor camera. But even if you don’t have a zoom lens the EA50’s 2x electronic zoom works really well and I didn’t notice any significant change in image quality when using the digital zoom. The camera is front heavy, but it’s not a heavy weight camera so I didn’t find it too bad to use.

The buttons and switches are easy to access when it’s on your shoulder. I missed having builtin ND filters and had to resort to using the shutter to deal with brighter scenes and there are no special functions like S&Q so no time-lapse or slow motion other than by shooting at 50p/60p and slowing it down in post.

I did shoot some time lapse by just letting the camera roll and then speeding it up in post. It does have a few slow shutter speeds so I was able to use these in some of the night sequences I shot for a blurry effect. I’ll be writing a longer more detailed review in due course and posting some sample clips and frame grabs.

This really is quite incredible. For some time now Litepanels have held an number of very broad and vague patents on the use of semiconductor (includes LED) lighting in photography and video production. The patents are vague, rambling and deliberately unspecific. Most of these are not patents on new technology, new ideas, new or innovative designs. These patents exist purely to try to prevent anyone else from putting LED’s into lights for use in photography and video production.

Now following a lengthy court case on the 11th of Sept a USITC Judge upheld Litepanels complaint that the only way to prevent abuse of their patent was an import ban on any type of LED lamp designed for photo or video use that may infringe on their patents. Because the patents are so ridiculously broad and basically cover any use of any fixture designed for film and video production that uses LED’s, an import ban would in effect be a total ban on the import of all photographic and video lighting devices that use LED’s. The final determination of the case is expected by January.

The problem is not so much the upholding of the patents, but that the patents were issued in the first place. There have been attempts to get the patents nullified, most of these involve showing that the patents lack “Novelty”.  A patent is supposed to demonstrate a novel, new design or concept never seen before. If it can be shown that LED video lights were sold prior to litepanels patent was issued then it may be nullified, but all this costs money. There are examples of people using LED flashlights as lights for video well before Litepanels came on the scene so they can hardly claim that using LED’s for video is a new or novel idea.

I don’t have a problem with inventors or designers protecting their research and development, but come on, you shouldn’t be able to patent something as vague as the use of LED’s in a frame as a light for photographic applications. That’s like having a patent on the use of lightbulbs in a socket to illuminate a home! Let them patent specific designs like the Sola or specific layouts of LED’s and specific housing designs, but having patents on the general concepts isn’t right.

Litepanels didn’t invent the LED, they didn’t invent the video light and I don’t think they can legitimately claim that they alone came up with the idea of using LED’s to light a scene for photo or video. This is the US patent office at it’s worst. I didn’t think you could patent a concept. You can patent a specific design or an invention but surely not a the vague concept of putting LED’s in a frame for use in photography.  The Litepanels patents make amusing reading as they include lots of “maybe” or “might” statements and are as vague as you can get. If this ban goes ahead then Litepanels will effectively have a monopoly on the sale LED video lights in the USA. This will prevent competition which in turn reduces innovation and new product development.

I’m running a couple of half day FS100 and FS700 workshops in Bangkok, Thailand on Wednesday the 3rd of October. There will be a morning session and an afternoon session. Both will cover camera setup, lens choices, picture settings and include a hands on session for you to try the cameras. These are free workshops. If you would like a place please contact me.