From JOYCEDIVISION…
Using The Sony FS7 from J O Y C E D I V I S I O N on Vimeo.
We took the camera for a quick test at the house of Vans. It was a great location, but the lighting was terrible. Real bad flicker whilst testing the slow mo.
We hadn’t had any time with the camera before the shoot, so we were thrown, quite literally into the deep end of the pool. Rob Smith was skating for us, and he was amazing, he was able to do the same thing over again, and hit the right spot every time, a true pro.
We didn’t have a Sony lens, so we raided our canon bags and had a look at what we had at the wide end of the spectrum. We decided to use the Tokina 11-16mm 2.8. We got a bit of vignette at 11mm – so decided to use it at 16mm which was perfect for the full frame sensor of the Sony FS7. Ive been using the Sony A7 and Sony a6000 for quite some time, and going from these to the FS7 was like putting on an old pair of slippers, it felt very intuative and I liked where everything was placed, it was much easier to operate than the first time I used a Canon C300. Then I remembered, this is what Sony do, they make great video cameras.
The last Sony video camera I owned was a Sony V1e and that was my work horse, I used to take it everywhere with me and I loved it. Then Canon brought out the 5D and Ive been using stills camera for video ever since.
It was great to be going back to a video camera, and this felt good, the design incorporated the best of both worlds, I really liked the weight, it was a lot smaller and lighter than it looked in photos, using the rig stripped down was my favorite way to use it. It was perfect for shooting skateboarding and I can see that this combined with a gimbal is going to be a very popular choice especially for action sports film makers, and this is a very big market these days.
The Sony e-mount is a fantastic choice for film makers with virtually any lens able to be fitted with converters, and the ability to use the Metabones speed boosters, thus giving you extra available light puts Sony in a very desirable position right now, a position that canon were in some years ago. Canon seem to have forgotten about consumers like me who operate on a limited budget and shoot all my own stuff, they seem only interested in the high end and rental market, Sony seem to have capitalised on this and are leading the way, not just for an A camera, but also for the film makers B camera, like the Sony A7s, with its ability to shoot in low light, high frame rates, a great new codec and also take great stills (for time-lapse) these make a great team.
It seems like they have really thought about people like me, and given us what we have been asking for for what seems like a long time.
Canon, its over to you.
Below is a short edit of Tom and I using the FS7 at House of Vans, featuring Rob Smith, Music by Jon Kennedy