Today is Lens day, finally after weeks of anticipation our new Sony 28-135mm f4 servo lens arrives, look at the size of the box ! With no time to play I took the Sony PXW-FS7 outside to show you how the servo lens performs. With a crop factor of 1.6 the shots have an effective field of view of 44-216mm.
Who says you can’t have a shallow depth of field with an f4 lens.
As a comparison I put the 10-18mm f4 wide angle lens on the FS7, this will be great for landscapes and interiors.
As a final test I put the 28-135mm lens onto my Sony A7s as you would expect it now acts as a full frame lens.
My thanks to John Preston of H Preston Media for getting this lens to me in time for BVE. I will get back to you tomorrow with my initial thoughts on the lens, especially in “Manual” mode.
Very interesting comparisons Philip. This is the one camera I feel ticks most of the boxes. My only worry has been the effective range of the zoom lens, but this illustration I must say, has helped me to negate that concern.
Gwynne
http://www.studiousmultimedia.com
Philip, do please let us know how you are finding the servo zoom aspect of this lens. How smoothly can it be controlled, particularly to and from full tele and wide.
Also can it do crash zooms? does it keep focus during crashes, or does it loose focus during the crash then the focus servos correct shortly after the crash.
I know it’s a parfocal lens but isn’t that a servo controlled behaviour rather?
Thanks, Duncan.
HDW : Between tonight and tomorrow morning you will know the answer to this.
Is there lens zoom remote control?
HDW : Do you mean Lanc, I have tried it with a Manfrotto MVR-901 and works fine.
looks good. how’s the camera on the shoulder now? is it front heavy much?
HDW : Its not bad but I do think the back unit with a “V” lock would help this.
I’ve heard there is no manual zoom – which is a deal breaker for me. I almost never use the servo on a zoom lens but prefer to quickly, manually punch in and out.
Nice try Sony, a parfocal zoom at a sensible price, but you really missed a trick omitting manual zoom.
HDW : Not the whip pan, crash manual zoom you get on an ENG camera, I will go into more detail tomorrow.
Hi Phil,
It would be great to know if Sony will expand and built on this lens and make 16-40 version….this would be very handy.
Perhaps Tokina will make Cine 24-70, soon since they introduced new 24-70 for stills.
Now you have a pro and expensive 4K cam but what about if Canon hit the market with the new C300/500 internal 4K. You will move again for Canon? To avoid those unhappy xavc codecs using FCPX.
HDW : The camera that ticks all my boxes is the Sony FS7…even Canon won’t bring out a 4K internal recording camera (C300 etc) for less than £8K plus the 17-120 Canon servo zoom lens for £25K is beyond my budget. Without a servo zoom as an option most large sensor video cameras are just glorified DSLRs. FCPX will be updated to include XAVC L fairly soon.