I thought I should post my musings in regards to the various offerings of relatively cheap professional cameras and discuss what I see as the pros and cons of each piece of gear. These advantages and disadvantages are not meant to be comprehensive and mainly relate to how I would use these cameras.
Sony FS7
Positives
1. Form Factor – Ready to be shoulder mounted with limited tweaking and though it is desirable to add other features it is ready to shoot straight out of the box.
2. Internal ND Filters – Having the ability to swap between clear, two stops, four stops and eight stops internally is a wonderful addition.
3. Super Slow Motion – being able to shoot HD at a constant 180fps is excellent. The Sony FS700, without an external recorder, was still hit-and-miss with its 240fps capped at 9 seconds.
4. 14-stops of dynamic range – true to Sony’s sensor technology the FS7 offers the best dynamic range of all four cameras.
5. S-Log3 – While it’s not universally loved it does produce a wonderfully flat image that give the editor plenty of latitude. Some have compared S-Log3 to the S-Log produced by the Arri cameras.
6. XLR inputs – so important to allow for quality audio input.
Negatives
1. Complicated menus – Despite improvements on previous models this camera does not have a great menu system.
2. XQD memory cards – as good as they are this media is very expensive. Currently you are looking at approximately AU$450.00 for a 64GB card.
3. Lens adapters – while many people may love the ability to adapt the Sony E-Mount I do not and much prefer to have a camera that has a PL Mount straight up. I know this makes me a gear snob but I just don’t use lenses from other mounts on my primary video camera. The danger with the FS7 is that
4. Cannibalisation of the Sony F5/F55 – This camera may spoil the user but it will really hurt the sales of cameras like the Sony F5. Sure the Sony F5 has other tricks but they’re not worth paying twice the price for IMO.
AJA Cion
Positives
1. PL mount – I know that this mount isn’t universally loved but it is my favourite. The lens options for the PL mount are incredible – you have a variety of options from Zeiss, the Canon Cine Primes collection, Cooke lenses, Angenieux Optimo lenses and the gorgeous Schneider Cine-Xenar III lenses (if you can find them in Australia). Many people will prefer the Canon C300 and Blackmagic Ursa because they offer other mounts like the EF but give me the lens choices of the PL mount any day of the week.
2. Form Factor – Made for shoulder-mounting and should not be too onerous for long shoots weighing in at only 2.9kg.
3. Global Shutter – Minimal distortion with camera movement, yes please!
4. XLR inputs – Only two XLR inputs, however, I have never needed more than that. These are well placed towards the front of the camera and easily accessible for a mounted shotgun microphone.
5. ProRes 4444 recording format – Although ProRes 422HQ is completely usable for the vast amount of productions the option to shoot with the versatile yet not storage-intensive (by comparison) ProRes 4444 recording format is a definite bonus on this camera.
6. 120 fps @ 4K – granted this requires an external recorder but the option to shoot moderately-super slow motion at the higher resolution is fantastic, particularly for my work on wedding shoots.
7. Magnesium chassis – this is the best looking camera of the four and much of that has to do with the magnesium chassis.
8. 12-bit 4K output – gotta love more colour depth.
9. Mechanical back focus adjustment tool – hopefully won’t be necessary but for tweaking I would be grateful for this addition.
Negatives
1. Lack of exposure – we just haven’t seen enough of this camera and what it can produce. The uncorrected footage provided so far is not enough for us to get an idea as to the capabilities of this camera.
2. No internal ND filters – The lack of internal ND filters essentially forces you to purchase a matte box to cover the large PL-mount glass you’ve purchased. This adds extra expenses and doesn’t make the camera as run-and-gun friendly.
3. AJA Pak Media – While I cannot comment about how great these cards are for recording the AJA Pak Media cannot be used in many other camera systems, unlike CFast 2.0 or XQD memory cards. This is fine, if you are only going to be using the AJA CION but it is limiting if you intend to have other systems on shoots.
4. 12 stops dynamic range – while not terrible this certainly falls short of the Sony FS7’s offering of 14 stops.
Canon C300
Positives
1. Weight – at 1.43 kilograms the body of this camera weighs half as much as the AJA Cion and only 20% of the Ursa.
2. Canon look – many people gush over the “Canon look” and how it best emulates film cinema. I won’t go that far, but the image out of this camera is lovely.
3. Internal ND Filters – Having the option to use 2, 4 or 6 stops of neutral density filters internally is simply fantastic.
Negatives
1. Form Factor – out of the box this camera doesn’t even remotely sit well on your shoulder. Frustratingly if you purchase a shoulder mount for this camera the position of the viewfinder will not align to the cameraman’s eye.
2. Limited slow motion – for some cinematographers slow motion is tacky. Not so for wedding videographers. I’ve tried to slow down 24p in the past to produce videos that capture the intimate details of a couple’s special day and it just gets choppy. After using the Sony FS700 and even the 96fps of the Panasonic GH4 the restriction of 59.94p on the Canon C300 becomes a problem for my workflow.
3. Price – It is difficult to ignore the fact that this camera is the oldest of the four and yet retails at over AU$3,000.00 more than the next most expensive (the Aja Cion). Couple this with the fact that there is likely to be a replacement on the way and the expense of this camera becomes difficult to swallow.
4. No UltraHD – I understand that Canon don’t wish to cannibalise sales of their other cameras but this camera is falling behind the wayside when it comes to resolution. Now I know what you are thinking, “what about a camera like the Arri Alexa that is so popular in Hollywood?” Sure, that’s only a 2.8k resolution image. However, with appropriate lenses the way that the Arri renders an image is unmatched by the Canon C300.
5. 50 Mbps data recording – Canon reveals its age again with a very low rate for data recording.
6. 8-bit compression – far way off the Cion’s 12-bit 4K compression.
7. AVCHD file formats – not a fan of the AVCHD, particularly in comparison to the ProRes options.
8. 12 stops dynamic range – again, not terrible but doesn’t stack up against Sony’s 14 stops.
Blackmagic Ursa
Positives
1. Price – the Ursa costs approximately AU$7,500.00 which is a bargain for this camera. If you compare it to the Blackmagic Production Camera, with the same sensor, then you might feel like you could’ve got the same image while paying half the price, but these cameras aren’t equal. The Production Camera has a useless internal battery, is ergonomically terrible for audio and has a terrible form factor. The image might be the same but the Ursa is so much more camera.
2. XLR inputs – Yep, doesn’t fall behind the other cameras offerings.
3. Multiple mount options – Don’t like PL mount? Fine, use EF mount.
4. Recording formats – You can choose from ProRes 422HQ or CinemaDNG RAW. Both are fantastic options.
5. 80fps @ 4K – all in all this is pretty impressive. I find the Panasonic GH4’s 96fps at 1080p very usable so I’ve no doubt the 80fps at 4K will be outstanding.
Negatives
1. Weight – the Ursa is unquestionably the heavyweight of the selections available. At 7.5 kilograms for the body alone this camera is almost three times as heavy as any of the other options on this list.
2. Form Factor – No doubt this has better form factor than the Canon C300, however, the current setup is not suitable for shoulder mounting. The 10” screen becomes a hindrance at such a close proximity to the eye and the added weight may cause long term damage for the layperson. It’s not a great camera to hand hold either, which limits it’s capabilities to living primarily on a tripod.
3. CFast cards – what the heck?
4. Lack of support – Blackmagic is notorious for releasing cameras that do not receive the necessary support and updates that they require. Thankfully the Ursa has already received a major firmware update. So maybe Blackmagic are fixing their past indiscretions. I’m not holding my breath though.