I spent quite a bit of time last week shooting in 4K with a FS700 using Sony’s IFR5 adapter and R5 recorder. I have to say that the pictures are really amazing. The dynamic range is incredible and the resolution and clarity beautiful. I’ll be posting a clip in the next few days and you’ll be able to see the footage at IBC.
But, the ergonomics are terrible. Attach the IFR5 and R5 to the back of an FS700 with an extended rail system and you have one heck of a long and heavy camcorder. For studio or drama shoots this may well be fine, in fact you may end up using the recorder as a completely separate device in the video village. But for documentary or run and gun the camera becomes a real monster.
The alternative to the IFR5/R5 is the Convergent Design Odyssey. The Odyssey can’t do 4K raw but it can do very high quality 4K compressed as well as 2K raw and high speed. For many 4K compressed will be far more manageable than 4K raw. It’s only the size of a small monitor (in fact it IS a monitor, a very nice OLED monitor) so far, far easier to use with the FS700. Convergent Design have just posted some sample clips on their website, so if you want an idea of just how good this combo will be follow the link below.
http://www.convergent-design.com/Products/Odyssey7Q/Sony.aspx
Can you tell me the manufacturer or brand of the base plate/shoulder mount system you are using?
It’s a modified Tilta base plate with Genus rods and a Genus base universal base plate under the R5 raw recorder.
Hi! Cheers for posting a lot of great stuff for us Sony users.
I got a FS700 but haven’t upgraded to the 4K yet, mostly the 1080HD will do for me, but I think the 8bit output over the SDI is one of the few downsides to the FS700.
Is there a 10 or 12 bit output option over 3G-SDI in HD 1080 with the new 4K update of the FS700? So I can record a higher quality signal than 8bit to an external recorder like the a Hyper Shuttle 2 etc?
J
Do we know exactly what the FS700 is outputting from the sdi port once upgraded? I saw a tweet reply from CD saying that they’ll be taking the 8 bit output from the camera and “uprezzing” it to 10 bit for the HD recording features on the Odyssey 7Q? Sounds sketchy to me. So is it 8-bit/2k raw/4k raw only coming out of the camera? Thanks!
When set to 2K or 4K raw the output from the SDI port is a proprietary 12 bit raw data stream. It can’t be used for anything other than a raw feed to a recorder. At this time only CD can decode it and they are not allowed to record 4K raw, only HD, 2K raw or 4K compressed. However from this 12 bit raw stream CD can extract 10 bit HD for top quality HD recording, much better than the regular 8 bit internal or 8 bit SDI of the bare FS700.
Thanks for clearing that up! The Sony solution seems like a nightmare, and I’m intrigued by the Odyssey 7Q. I think the 4k video solution with good colorspace is all we’ll need for our productions, but it’s too bad the 2k raw seems crippled by aliasing, etc., that would’ve been a homerun.