Sony 35mm NEX-FS700

Sony digital motion picture cameras come from two design teams. The F65 camera system is designed at Sony’s Atsugi Tech Center, in the countryside not far from the famous Kamakura Buddha. A one hour train ride northeast to downtown Tokyo takes us to Sony’s Shinagawa design group—who have been equally busy on a new 35mm digital motion picture camera.

This is actually Act 2 of the popular saga of the NEX-FS100, aka NXCAM S35. Act 2 is usually where the action really gets going. Which it does with Sony’s new NEX-FS700. The designers listened to users, made improvements, and came up with excellent new capabilities and features.

We will have a 5-page article on the FS700 camera in our April 2012 NAB edition of FDTimes.

Here are some reasons to line up at Sony’s NAB booth and get your hands on this Hasselblad-sized 4K camera.

  1. The NEX-FS700 camcorder uses a new 4K Exmor Super 35 CMOS sensor (Total 11.6 million pixels). Pre-release sources say its “high-speed readout chip is optimized for motion picture shooting, giving high sensitivity, low noise and minimal aliasing.”
  2. Sony is planning a future firmware upgrade that will enable the NEX-FS700 to output a 4K bitstream data over 3G HD-SDI when used with an optional Sony 4K recorder.
  3. Up to 28 Mbps 1080/60p MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 to internal SD or Memory Stick Pro.
  4. Shoots stills: 8.4 Megapixels in 16:9 and 7.1 Megapixels in 4:3 format—with Sony Alpha still camera look and color.
  5. Slow motion to 240 fps at full HD.
  6. Up to 960 fps (with reduced resolution).
  7. Behind-the-lens Clear, ND.6, ND1.2, and ND1.6 filters.
  8. Industry-standard handgrip Hirth-tooth rosette.
  9. Sensitivity: 500 ISO to 16,000 ISO.

The NEX-FS700 can continuously record slow motion to 1920×1080 up to 60p on the internal SD or Memory Stick single slot, or FMU Memory Unit.

Simultaneous recording to FMU and Memory provides peace of mind and the possibility to hand over a card when shooting is complete.

The FS700 will overcrank to 240 fps (Sony calls it Super Slow Motion) at full HD.

Super Slow Motion is recorded to an internal buffer (as do most slow motion cameras). At 120 fps, the camera records about 16 seconds of real-time, and at 240 fps, the camera records around 8 seconds. Screen time, played back at 24 fps, is 80 seconds in both instances.

You will be able to control whether the 8 – 16 seconds of internally buffered memory is triggered from the beginning of the take, the middle, or the end.

It will shoot 480 fps at 1920 x 432 skipped readout interpolated to 1920 x 1080, and 960 fps with reduced resolution interpolated to 1920 x 1080.

Estimated cost is probably below $10,000 and the camera ships in June.

 

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1 Response:

  1. JAESU JEONG says:

    Dear Jon Fauer, It was nice meeting you during NAB. It was first time to mee you personally. Thanks for your detailed information for Sony NEX – FS700 camera. Again I recall your book ARRIflex 16SR2 & 3, which I learned film camera. See you soon!