As a freelance cameraman I resolved many years ago not to purchase my own camera. I did not want to be locked down to one format and there was no single camera that could meet all my needs. My clients are diverse and I work on a large variety of ever changing formats.
Because many producers are purchasing their own cameras, the choice of format or model is increasingly taken away from the cameraman. You arrive on set and you take what is given to you.
However, I have kept a keen eye on what is out there. I found myself secretly hoping to discover my dream camera: flexible, powerful, HD and SD, affordable and with film-like potential – an impossible wish.
Impossible until I saw the first promotional material on the Sony PMW-F3. Could this be my ideal camera? Yes, it would not be best for electronic news gathering (ENG) type filming, which constituted a large portion of my work, but I didn’t care about that after studying this machine’s attributes.
It wasn’t long before I found myself on the phone with Neil White from SBSS ordering my Sony F3, feeling impulsive and excited. Despite my former resolutions I was eager to own my own camera, one with beautiful depth of field (which has always been important to me) that records in a very familiar broadcast format and with the potential to be upgraded to so much more. Neil made the order and purchase process so smooth that, before I knew it, the F3 was mine.
Expectations met
The camera was all I expected with exceptional “clean’ images as promised by technicians in various articles, film-like depth of field and textures, easy to use and upgradeable to 4:4:4, unbelievable low-light capabilities with noiseless pictures all the way up to +12dB, PL Mount, and so on.
The F3 really comes into its own with PL mounted film lenses which I recommend hiring if the budget allows it. I opted to buy a set of good Nikon and Zeiss stills lenses – primes and zooms. These are affordable, make beautiful images in a controlled environment, but fiddly to use on rigorous shoots. I have also acquired a number of Zacuto accessories such as a shoulder pad and 15mm rods that complement the camera.
It’s not an easy camera for ENG “run and gun’ work but this will change soon with the launch of two new ENG style zoom lenses from Sony, which will respond electronically to the zoom rocker on the side of the camera. With one of these lenses and some good primes you have the best of all worlds at your disposal — documentary, reality and film style shooting in one package.
Until I can afford a new Sony zoom lens I will train myself to adapt to all types of shoots with my existing stills lenses and hire in where needed.
Screen Africa Magazine – February 2012
