Review: Sony PXW-FS5

2K Center Crop and 2x Clear Image Zoom

Every FS5 owner is going to have their favorite feature that made them fall in love with this camera—enough to invest the $6,100 required to own one with the 18-105mm f/4 PowerZoom kit lens. For me it was the combination of the 2K Center Crop and the 2x Clear Image Zoom. While similar in that both extend the reach of the camera by a factor of 2x, they differ in the potential they both unlock.

2K Center Crop allows the pairing of lenses that would not otherwise fill the large Super35mm sensor, such as some B4 mount ENG lenses. Of course, you can still use the 2K Center Crop, which uses only the center of the sensor, to resolve the image you see and record, with native E-mount or other mounted APS-C or full-frame lenses. This effectively doubles your reach, and reach on a Super35mm camera with a parfocal and fixed-aperture lens beyond 200mm (300mm after crop factor considerations) has few options.

Clear Image Zoom, a feature first seen on the Sony EA50, but curiously absent from the FS700, allows an additional 2x zoom. The resulting image is very similar to using only optical zoom, but without the dramatic loss in light transmission. I hesitate to call it strictly digital zoom because it results in a full-resolution image and, in many senses, is superior to using a teleconverter for the light transmission loss alone. The Clear Image Zoom feature can turn any prime lens into a zoom lens, useful when you want to adjust framing in-camera but cannot change your position, and especially when you want to do so with a really fast lens. Although Sigma does make a really nice and fast 18–35mm f/1.8 zoom lens, it isn’t parfocal, so you can’t actually zoom optically while filming and still hold manual focus. With Clear Image Zoom you can turn, say, a Canon 20mm f/1.4 into a 20–40mm f/1.4, or a 35mm f/1.4 lens into a 35–70mm f/1.4 lens. If you want to go even wider, Rokinon has a 12mm f/2 lens that is a native E-mount that becomes a 12–24mm f/2.0 lens.

While the current firmware implementation does not allow fluid zoom from the optical lens PowerZoom range into the Clear Image Zoom range (there is a slight hesitation), the zoom is smooth on either side. Sony hasn’t disclosed if the delay in transition is something they can fix, but of course you can use the optical PowerZoom only with a supported Sony PZ lens. I couldn’t decide which one I wanted, so I bought both the 18–105mm f/4 and 28–135mm f/4 PowerZoom lenses for different uses—the 18–105 for handheld work and the 28–135 for tripod work.

No More Trade-offs

In a lot of my work since I moved from camcorders to large-sensor cameras, I felt I was constantly juggling trade-offs. The ability to go handheld when needed and a wide zoom range were the big ones. I did solve the zoom range limitation by purchasing a pair of 120–600mm zoom lenses for my FS700 and FS100, but the cost was a massive loss of light transmission as I was operating at f/8. Now, with the FS5, I have a camera that I can handle like a camcorder, produce a 4K image with a large-sensor look and quality, and reach far enough for a close-up, using faster lenses, even from the back of the largest conferences centers. Yes, with the Sony FS5, I found video camera love again.

Figure 6. The FS5 SmartGrip with can articulate and has many useful controls like a focus magnification button, zoom rocker, record button, custom assign button, and a rec start/stop button. Click the image to see it at full size.