Thank you lightchild!

Thank you Alex! Really appreciate the support! 🙏🏼

Thanks Edwin!

Thanks for the great comment Richard!

Thank you very much Andreas!

never saw anyone raving about anything

Thank you Griffin!

Vistek | Your Visual Imaging Experts what was the distortions glass you referred to? It definitely gave it a unique look

I just collect various glass in my travels - prisms, chochky glass, stained glass, broken filters. Whatever I can find.

Thank you Martin!

Thanks for the great comment Duane. Yes - the waveform is so critical here!!

Very interesting. I was explicitly told otherwise - BUT that's fantastic news. I definitely COULD NOT get it to work with any other adapted lens, and I tested a bunch.

Thanks Nathan. I wish I could - but I've since dumped the footage off my drive. I would be willing to bet that whoever you are interested in buying the camera from; they would be more than happy to let you test drive the camera and shoot some footage that you could take with you to push & pull around. I know that we make all efforts at Vistek to allow our clients to test these products out if they feel the need. - D

Hi Stewart. I think I just used Sony still lenses mostly.

Thanks Aaron. And yeah, I had two audio sources - one lower than the other in case of unexpected peaks. In the rush to get the video out I failed to balance them. Mostly noticeable if you're wearing headphones. Good catch. ;)

@@vistek All good, I figured as much. Hey if you need a hand editing let me know :p. Personally I make sure to interpret my camera footage to force mono tracks on all tracks, so even if I get a doubling up, they are still forced centred at the start of the edit. That way you are never having to fill left/right, or remember to pan a track, you just need to turn tracks on and off as needed. Unless I know someone is recording via a stereo or on board stereo mic, that adjustment saves me a lot during fast turn arounds. But seriously, how much were you annoyed by switching scan modes just to get higher framerates, essentially making the S&Q button pointless.

Thanks Aaron. Yeah the scan modes are most certainly a bit cumbersome. I actually boned the footage in first hour of my shoot because we were rushing and I ended up in the wrong imager mode. It angered me at first, but to be honest - after shooting with this camera a bunch I eventually got used to it. Do I think it can be done better? Yeah no question. But one eventually adapts to Sony's logic behind it.

@@vistek Yah I'm with you. I just don't understand the reasoning. The Venice menu is a dream, clearly copied Arri, and inspired in part by the older F55's etc. So there is really little excuse than they just don't know how to handle an interface for solo ops. They'll get there someday.

I shot one film on the Venice and I would firmly agree with you, there is obviously some reasoning behind that. One is simply cost - to build in that infrastructure requires a big and expensive re-design and architecture (that's just my guess, I have no proof). The other being that they don't want to make the camera so good it eats into their Venice sales (another guess, but I think that's logical). It would however, be nice to see it get a little closer to the Venice in usability. That camera is a dream (albeit a costly one).

Hi Olaraay, the FX9 has a Super 35 mode so you can continue to use the MK lenses.

@@vistek and what if we were to use 1 full frame lens in super 35 mode ( most of our lens are not full frame and we dont have time to switch between super 35 mode and full frame mode, will full frame lens look bad on super 35mm mode ?

we'd like to see you tone it down, buddy

Hi Marc, can you be more specific? I’m not sure I understand what you’re referring to.

Hi Jeremy. Thanks for your comment. Because I'm not entirely certain what your experiencing, all I can really recommend is to expose your Slog3 middle grey to the white paper value of 41% or the white point to 61% depending on what resources you have (a grey card, or a white wall etc). Once you establish this recommended exposure, you can then begin to over-expose by about a stop, but you do have to pay careful attention that none of your highlights are clipping. Also, treat your ISO as though it is film. As in; you can not change this. So the only way you can change your exposure is with your aperture, shutter angle, or external light power. If you need more light, go to the HI base ISO. Hope that helps!

I have done all that but there are times where even on high base iso I need the iso to be a little higher so what your saying and what I think is the camera doesn’t allow to take the iso or gain up past base if you are recording to a monitor

In Cine EI mode you can not change the gain in any way. Externally or internally. It’s important to think of Cine EI mode as “film stock.” You can certainly under or over expose it, like you can with any film stock, but you can’t change the stock. When you toggle through the gain settings on you camera in Cine EI you will notice that nothing happens. However if you turn on your monitor LUT (MLUT) you will see the screen become lighter or darker. This is just the LUT compensating but you are not actually changing your sensor gain. A bit of a hack is to shoot in Custom Mode and select SLOG3 as your picture profile/gamma. This will allow you to change the camera’s gain. However the results will be generally the same as if you underexposed a base ISO. What’s important to comprehend about Cine EI is that it puts the focus on your lighting and lens choices and doesn’t use Gain/ISO as a get out of jail free card. If you want a cleaner image, I would suggest two things. 1. Shoot in Custom Mode with S-Cinetone. This is a hyper gamma curve that provides a very good deal of latitude so long as you protect your highlights. 2. Alternatively, you could look at selling the FX9 and buy an FX6 which has a 2nd base ISO if 12,800 in Cine EI mode. That will buy you an extra stop and a half over the FX9, but there are going to be some trade offs, not to mention the loss of investment when selling one camera for another. Obviously something I hesitate to recommend. The FX9 is a hugely powerful and capable camera. Among the best I’ve ever used. I would encourage you to spend a bit more time testing and working with the camera in a variety of modes to get a handle on what it can and can’t do. Best of luck!

Thank you so much for your detailed reply. So what is your preferred mode scinetone or slog

Hi Rahul, it’s because setting your base to 4000 and then EI to 1600 causes you to over expose the image by 1.5 stops. When you compensate by pulling the footage in post, you are crushing down the noise that typically exists in the mid to shadow tones.

@@vistek thank you

The comparison between the FS7 and FX9 is throughout the whole video. Every instance where we compare the two cameras are clearly marked with lower thirds.

Which part of the video are you referring to, BMF?

Hi ORSM. Yes, you can register faces and shuttle between multiple faces in a scene. It works great - but keep in mind that in narrative cinema work often the actors are travelling in the scene in various directions, often never looking directly towards the camera. The AF requires the camera to see most of the face. So in these cases, pulling manually is still the only solution. As long as everyone is looking at the camera, then the multiple face feature is excellent. Regarding the stabilization - yes, only Sony lenses allow for this. You will not get this feature from any other lens. Regarding gradability - very similar to Slog3 on the FS7. However, the dynamic range and colours have been improved - which likely makes it a bit easier than prior. I would encourage you to try using S-CineTone. Don't be afraid of it. It has lots of dynamic range, and perhaps it would also encourage you to spend more time considering your scene lighting. Log isn't a blanket fix for every situation. Cheers! -D

@@vistek thanks a lot sir( sorry for misspelling, too quick):)Are you sure you dont mix the gyro, and the autofocus? I mean the incam stabilisation is recorded, indempended of the lense, so why would it not work ?theres no way , of sourse I am scaling down ot about 7 stops latitude, in S cineontes, for film making :)

@@vistek I have to clarify that you probably mean. E.mount lenses :) hers from the Sonys-PDF manual : " This feature is also compatible with any E-mount lens and allows for far faster processing than conventional NLE stabilisation workflows**. " that means that I can use the stabilsation with f.eks a Xeen lense :)

Hi ORSM, Sadly no - it has to be a native Sony lens. This is done somewhat purposefully so you have to use Sony glass. It's just their proprietary encoding. The mount means nothing, especially if it's a dummy mount (like on a cine lens). The camera has no idea what's on the other side of that mount. But if you put on a Sony lens, it knows through the AF & Metadata contacts that you're using a certified Sony lens. Then they reward you with stabilization. But you are correct in that it is all just gyro metadata. Which means, yes, they could open it up to 3rd party lenses. They just chose not to, and of course it's their right to. It's also worth mentioning that I know a couple DPs who own more than on FX9 and they are now exclusively using Sony G-Master lenses because of the quality of the optics. So there is more than one reason to go with Sony glass.

@@vistek OMG ! I just bought the Xeen lense, in fact I was close to order 2, but at least the 24mm . So , when they sya its comatible, the actually lie ! I will ask directly on SONY support. I just also asked at B&H, they "could not guaratee" it worked. ..........I mean, this is jsut NOT good ! what prime lense can I buy from SONY? like I said I hav the 16-35G. lense wide, andt he 28-135 . bu t I think I need a good Prime like zeiss superspeed, or something .

Hi Deaniweenie. Thanks for the comment. No, that's organic noise from the camera. It doesn't mean that the camera isn't amazing at high ISOs. But I think the spot shows how easily it is to screw this up (which was what I did). I'm relying on the fact that most viewers don't really understand the concept of noise, or are watching on small screens - so it's primarily an issue for us pixel peepers. Regardless, I got the camera just hours ahead of the shoot. Set up the hot buttons as I needed, familiarized myself with it, but did no testing. I just didn't have the time. I watched lots of videos on the camera, including Alister Chapman's 3 hour long presentation. I knew that the camera was powerfully clean in the higher base. So I just cranked it up. However, as I mentioned in the video - the MLUT can mislead you and make you under-expose your images. Because even though it looks good in the monitor, it's actually recording a lot darker in CINE EI. On top of that, there were times I thought I was recording in 4K, when I was in 2K (the reason involves moving quickly and missing some things). So that means the noise and sharpness also goes down. All told I underexposed, or had the incorrect resolution selected, and often both. This means I literally did all the wrong things at once. I think this makes it a great example to discuss best practices. Most review videos will show you how great it looks when everything goes right. But often most things don't go right - especially when you're working with a camera that's never been (personally) tested and you're moving fast with a small crew. Additionally I didn't apply any NR in post because I wasn't happy with how much it softened the image (with my limited resources). My hope was that with the tests I did in my home and the model, we could see exactly what went wrong during that job and how to operators can prevent that. It's worth noting that I did two jobs with the camera after the first one and I didn't screw up and the images look amazing. I just can't show those because the projects haven't been released by the client yet. Hopefully that answers your question(s)!

@@vistek that's super helpful to understand! I was looking at it thinking "huh...everything I've seen suggests that this camera is pretty good in low light." Based on your tests in the video I'd probably opt to shoot S-Cinetone in low light environments where the absolute best dynamic range isn't a priority as much as a cleaner image (odds are in low light there won't even be the maximum dynamic range available to capture even in S-Log).

You got it spot on, FSF. In low light, there often isn't a ton of range anyways. That said, I shot a commercial with the FX9 in S-Cinetone just before lockdown and it looks incredible - and there is zero grading. Client was super stoked. Image looks amazing and it was shot using face tracking the whole time. Super happy with what the camera was able to do.