SICA WORKSHOP: SONY F-55 camera / AXS -R7 portable recorder

SONY began marketing the concept of ‘electronic cinematography, utilizing its analog  HDVS professional video cameras. But this effort met with very little success. However, this led to one of the earliest shift from using motion picture film stock as recording medium. With lot of research and changes, digital cinema began to emerge.

SONY is one of the pioneers for the development of Digital motion picture cameras. The quality of images produced by Sony Cine Alta cameras fancied Hollywood productions.

When it comes to digital filmmaking, Master cinematographer Vittorio Storaro prefers to shoot only with Sony Cine Alta cameras.

SICA organised this workshop to its members to bring light into Sony PMW-F55 Cine Alta 4K Digital Cinema Camera features.

Headed by SONY Team – Mr. Sundaram, Mr. Sandheev Nair and Mr.Kumar (Telerad)

In the presence of SICA  eneral Secretary: Mr B.Kannan ,Vice president Mr.Priyan and Treasurer  Mr.Ramanath shetty

Venue: Prasad Lab Theatre, Chennai.

Date: 13.11.2016, Sunday.

Sony PMW-F55 CineAlta 4K Digital Cinema Camera

The Sony PMW-F55 is a camera engineered with cinematographers needs in mind for today and tomorrow, with planned firmware updates with more frame rates, more operating features and more recording options.

This Camera features Super 35mm image sensor, capable of capturing 4K, 2K and HD resolution video in a variety of formats via the camera’s internal recorder. The F55 is among the first digital motion picture cameras with a global shutter, which completely eliminates motion skew and other ‘rolling’ shutter distortions. Sony has designed the F55 as the foundation of an exceptionally versatile, modular system.

Sony has very good OLED electronic view finder and also LCD display at camera operator’s side. Built in ND filters is major advantage while filming outdoors.

F 55 offers wide exposure latitude of 14stops as film and wider color Gamut than any other camera in the market.

Sony F-55 has variety of recording options. Internally it records compressed 4k images and with external recorders like SONY’s own AXS R5 or latest AXS R7 which can be docked at the rear end of the camera. It has the option of high quality 4k raw recording  (16 bit linear) which gives more advantage to manipulate images during post work.

One of the highlights of the F55 is its intuitive one-touch interface, which was designed by Sony with a significant amount of input from professional cinematographers. Rather than being forced to dig through menus, the one-touch interface allows you to have direct access to important shooting options such as frame rate, shutter speed, color temperature, ISO sensitivity and gamma. The buttons are assignable which allows you to customize the setup to fix your exact needs.

Another impressive feature of the F55 is the ability to out real-time 4K footage to a compatible monitor. The F55 uses its four 3G-SDI outputs to support this feature.

The F55 also has support for other popular connections such as HDMI, USB, DC input, a removable XLR audio module and a removable time code/genlock module.

Running out of battery is among the most frustrating things that can happen while shooting. The F55 uses Sony’s BP-FL75 battery pack, which features Olivine Lithium Iron Phosphate instead of conventional Lithium Ion cathodes resulting in a tremendous increase in charge-discharge cycles compared to other batteries.

Technical specifications:

• Sensor: Super 35mm CMOS with global shutter
• Pixels: Total (11.6 MP) Effective (8.9 MP)
• Video Resolution: 4096 x 2160 pixels (4k resolution)
• Dynamic Range: 14 stops
• Video Recording Format: MPEG-2 Long GOP, HD 422 mode: CBR, 50 Mbps max, MPEG-2422P@HL
• Shutter Speed 1/24s to 1/6,000s
• Memory Cards SxS (x2, ExpressCard 34 slots), SD card slot (x1)
• Audio Input: XLR-type 3-pin with Line/Mic/Mic +48V/AES/EBU selectable (x2, female), Output: phono jack (CH-1, CH-2), Headphone: Stereo mini jack (x1), Speaker: monaural
• Lens Mount FZ-mount, PL-mount (with supplied adapter)
• Weight:  2.2 kg body only

Sony’s New AXS-R7 Recorder 

Another important product introduced by Sony professionals to the members is AXS- R7 recorder.

To get RAW video images on the F55 cinema camera, Earlier AXS-R5 RAW recorder accessory that mounted on the back of the camera was used.

Now Sony has introduced an updated version, the AXS-R7, which has two recording slots. An interesting feature with this recorder is its ability to shoot 120fps 4K RAW on the F55. For shooting at higher frame rates, the recorder captures 2K RAW at up to 240 FPS.

Apart from its raw recording options, it offers a special feature called ‘cache recording’(30 seconds) which will be a boon for wild life cinematographers or while filming some rapid moments like thunder striking.

In cache recording mode, the camera is always recording, but overwrites the information until you hit record button.

In addition to 16-bit linear RAW, the AXS-R7 will record Sony’s new 16-bit X-OCN format. X-OCN is the AXS-R7 recording format that uses a new Sony algorithm specifically formulated for the F5 and F55 sensors. X- OCN produces file sizes much smaller than camera RAW, resulting in longer record times, faster file transfers and more economical postproduction while retaining the quality of 16-bit linear encoding.

Mr.Sundar from Sony had been very interactive with sica members as he explained each and every point in Tamil and also put across technological jargons aiming for the better understanding of Cinematographers.

He introduced about the use of sony professional 4k monitor which brings true display of colours that is very important for cinematographers to judge contrast and lighting.

Sony’s cinema prime lens was also displayed.

At concluding note Sony team promised to offer technical support for cinematographers using Sony F-55 Camera.

Shri B.Kannan thanked the Sony Team and shared his views on using Sony F-55 for his current film project.