How to get the most from your Sony FS700 Camera

The Sony FS700 camera is a interchangeable lens HD camera with a Super 35mm 4K chip.

The large Super 35mm chip (the same size found in the Arri Alexa and Red Epics) allows the camera to produce the shallow depth of field indicative of drama productions.

Within the Sony range it sits between the FS100 and F3 Cameras.
Equivalent cameras can be considered the Red Epic (for slow mo shooting) and the Canon C300 (for broadcast HD).

Internally it can record using the AVCHD codec at compression rates of up to 28Mbps. The colour processing is 8bit (the same as the Canon C300)

However, it also has 3G SDI out, allowing 'broadcast quality' compression via an external recorder such as the Atomos Samurai, Nanoflash or Sound devices Pix.

The 'kit lens' provided is a Sony 18-200 mm zoom (f3.5-5.6) which is a little slow for many purposes.

However, as the camera uses the Sony NEX lens mount, which has a very shallow flange depth, adaptors are available for pretty much every lens available: from Canon EOS and Nikon F stills lenses, through to PL mount cinema lenses.

Sony have also indicated that a future firmware upgrade will allow it to output 4K 12bit Raw footage for recording on an external recorder - bringing the quality of recording available up to that produced by 'digital cinema' cameras such as the Arri Alexa and Red MX.

The Cameras main selling point is its ability to shoot super-slow mo footage, up to 240fps in full 1920x1080p HD.

In addition it can shoot up to 480fps in SD (approx. 1920x480) and even 960fps at sub-SD resolutions (approx. 960x240).

However, it should be noted that shooting high speed requires significantly more light than shooting at normal speeds: one extra stop of light is required every time the frame rate is doubled (e.g. from 25fps to 50fps).