One more day till the Glasgow Camera Day at BBC Scotland where you will entertained and educated all about Going HD-Going Tapeless.

There are two spots, Wednesday morning and afternoon, both consist of Phil Myers telling us all about Large Sensor Cameras and then onto ENG camcorders all tapeless !

HD Warrior has been invited to produce a web video, you will see the Sony FS100 being used in the field along with various lenses as a run and gun which may give you ideas for future productions you may have in mind. Remember CVP are here to help with any of your production needs big or small.

Details can be found here : http://www.creativevideo.co.uk/index.php?t=events/19/

As you can see for yourself the WORKFLOW part of the USA Sony FS100 brochure states RGB 4:4:4 from the HDMI socket while the UK version states 4:2:2.

This is causing a great debate and confusion amongst my readership who surprisingly come from all parts of the globe and the US chaps are telling me that the Sony FS100 is 4:4:4 while it is clear that the UK info from Sony tells a different story.

It won’t be the first time that the same camcorder has slightly different specs depending where in the world it is sold in fact I remember the good old days of DV when the firewire input was disabled in the UK to save paying extra import duties.

Sony Broadcast UK are on the case I hope to get a definitive reply via Japan later on today.

Someone once told me that the DSLR is simply another tool in your box, especially if you are filming weddings with them. Over the last two years I have developed a comfort zone with the Video DSLR though I do not use one outside the studio other than the odd pack shots and close up work of new camcorders etc.

This true story starts about 8 weeks ago the only change to the truth is the boys names to save their professional blushes. I was working at my desk when George came on the phone with an offer of a second hand Sony EX-3 a week later we shook hands and Prestons had their EX-3 and George was very happy with his four figure sum.

The boys, George and Scott were looking to beef up their DSLR kit as they use two Canon 60Ds for all their top end wedding work. About a week before the Glasgow open day I got a further call from George asking if we would be interested in their second EX-3, no problem and John Preston took the EX-3 at the Glasgow show and the boys now had a fair sum of money to spend.

I demonstrated the Sony FS100 to them and they were blown away by it’s exceptional noise free 21dB gain, so much so they put their name down for a new FS100. The Nikon to E mount adapters from MTF were just on their second production so it would be about a week till we took delivery of the boys adapter, I gave them my Sony 18-200 “E” lens to tide them over.

Last week I visited the boys in their plush offices in Glasgow city centre to hand over the MTF adapter. “How did you get on with the new FS100 boys” “It saved our bacon last weekend” was the sheepish reply.

The Report…”Last weekend the boys were filming a two camera wedding using the FS100 as a third camera for syncing sound and cutaways, the day went well till it came to the speeches, fortunately they were using the FS100 for sound so decided to record the speeches using all three cameras. The speeches were longer than anticipated, the day was one of Glasgow’s hottest and half way through both Canon 60Ds brought up a thermometer indication, indicators flashing and both cameras switched off within a minute of each other leaving both boys shocked to the core.

Over the last year they had gradually gone from using two Sony EX-3s switching over to two Canon DSLRs and till this moment in time with much success…this was a monumental disaster but for the luck of buying the Sony FS100 one week before that very wedding, they composed themselves, finished the speeches with the one camera that was preventing a major law suite and the demise of their wedding film business.

I don’t need to tell any of you how serious this could have been but I do think all of you filming weddings with DSLRs should take stalk and rethink your workflow.

Far to many of you poo poo the video camcorder these days in preference for the DSLR when it’s clear that you have a temperature time bomb waiting to happen…sometime in the future !

There is a place for both technologies, especially now we have cameras like the AF101 and the FS100, George and Scott still have a wedding video business thanks to having the Sony FS100 … but you may not be so lucky !

In my opinion the DSLRs are good for openers, musical montages and anything that does not require sound other than that you should be using a video camera like the Canon XF300, Sony NX70/NX5, Panasonic AF101 or the Sony FS100.

If you are being payed to produce a wedding video you are legally bound to make sure you have taken all precautions possible to make sure you produce the package the bride and groom have asked you to film for them, there is no excuse in law for ignorance or using equipment that is not fit for purpose. You take someones money off them…most of you get payed before the wedding you are entering a legal contract of work, if your DSLR shuts down because its too hot you better have a back up of some kind at the ready otherwise it becomes very expensive and you may loose you business.

My thanks to Bertoli for pointing out my D60 should read 60D.

While we wait for the new Sony FS100 to appear why not look at Doug Jensen’s footage, Doug produces tutorial DVDs for Vortex Media which teach you how to use various levels of Sony Camcorders, I bought one of his DVDs teaching me a lot more about my Sony EX3, well worth the money.

A week before the 2011 NAB Convention, Sony sent a pre-production NEX-FS100 for me to shoot some demo footage for use in my F3/FS100 workshops they asked me to teach at the show.

The camera arrived on a Saturday morning. I set it up on my DSC test chart and created a custom Picture Profile that looked good to me. Please keep in mind that you should never judge a Sony camera right out of the box. You MUST create (or get) a Picture Profile or Scene File with a Sony camera if you expect the camera to perform at its best. That’s the way Sony designs them, and it is the right way to do it.

All but 6-7 shots of this video were shot on that Saturday afternoon at various locations around Newport, Rhode Island.

I used a Novoflex E-Mount to Nikon adapter so that I could use my own Nikon lenses instead of the 18-200 f/3.5-6.3 lens that Sony sent with the camera. In my opinion, that lens is too slow for getting decent shallow depth-of-field . . . which is, after all, one of the main reasons for choosing a camera such as the NEX-FS100 that has a Super-35mm sensor.

The Nikon lenses I used were a 17-35mm f/2.8 and a 80-200mm f/2.8

Only the fishing boats and swan shots at 6:35 were taken with the stock 18-200mm lens.

All of the softball footage was shot through a chain-link fence in bright sun.

Because the camera does not have any built-in ND filters of it’s own, I used a $150 Genus Variable ND Polarizer filter to control the amount of light entering the lens. ALL shots, except for the indoor fruit basket were shot with the ND filter on the lens. I found that this filter actually allowed me much finer control over my exposure than of the camera had only a couple of built-in filters. What at first seemed like a big shortcoming of the camera, was quickly forgotten. I can use cheap step-down rings to use the same ND Polarizer on all of my lenses regardless of their native filter size.

No matte box was used.

All of the slow-motion shots were shot at 60fps at full 1920×1080 mode and recorded on the camera’s onboard SD card. Full 1920×1080 @ 60fps is a unique ability of this camera compared to other Sony camcorders.

All shots in the video were recorded to the onboard SD card at 24Mbps. I will post comparison footage that was recorded simultaneously with a NanoFlash at 100MBps when I have time.

Only three shots, which are identified with supers had any color grading or post-processing applied to them. Everything else is straight out of the camera.