The camera that stole the show this year at BPV 2011 was the Sony NX70. Everyone was asking Sony questions about the NX70 and admiring it’s very practicable size.
Sony are onto another winner with this camcorder not forgetting it’s ability to shoot 1080 50p, I deliberately did not film in 1080 50p today simply because I want to savour this moment when we get the first NX70s some time during early June.
The boys from H Preston Media, Andy Guest (left) and Andy Davis (right) and a few others had a great night out at a local Indian restaurant called the “Palace” situated in St Helens and comes well recommended, my thanks to Dave from DSM who treated us to the meal.
As usual Alister Chapman drew great crowds eagerly listening to his every word during his very popular talk about large sensor camcorders, especially the Sony PMW-F3. The show was a good success on the whole, there were not giant crowds but the exhibitors seemed to be happy with the response and the overall buying power of the customers who came to the show in fact bodies through the door was up on last year.
Sony also had many people looking at the FS100 and we also tried the Nikon to E mount with a 50mm f1.4 lens on the camera in fact one of the most amazing facts came the night before when Alister Chapman told me that he had conducted a lens test on his Sony F3 comparing the Zeiss CP2 against the Nikon 50mm f1.8mm and he could not see any discernible difference in quality between the two lenses which is £2500 Zeiss against a £150 Nikon prime lens.
To qualify this there are major advantages by using the CP2 lens for follow focus as they tend to be all the same diameter and have better arranged teeth for pull focus units that the Nikon can’t compete with but it clarifies a niggle that I have banged on about for a while now that major glass manufacturers like Nikon have indeed caught up, optically, with the likes of Zeiss and if you do not intend to use a follow focus system prime Nikon glass on a large sensor camera will indeed cut the mustard.
I am producing a video of the show which will be uploaded next week and I also shot footage with the NX70 and having the ability to set your sound levels, see them on your viewfinder, set 0dB, shutter to OFF and manual iris made the NX70 a joy to use and I can’t wait till I get my hands on one.
