Sony, serious contender ?

[Bastien Tribalat]

Hi folks,
It is a bit nerdy and stuff but I saw early this evening that the new Cinealta Camera (SRW9000) will be able to receive a 35mm sized CMOS Sensor (probably the same as the F35) with a PL Mount as an upgrade. Being a HD-CAM SR2 camera with bitrates up to 880Mb/sec and ready for file based tapeless workflow (as stated on Sony's website) the camera seems to be a serious contender in the cinema industry.

It still lacks RAW imaging and 4K (but they say that they will do 4K cameras "soon") but is going to be a serious piece of gear.

I still think Red as the best offer(s), I'm just watching the market.

 

[Andrew Rieger]

Not a serious contender. Have you seen the price of the f35? Sony wont be able to compete till they get their prices way, way , way down. Even Arri's new line is under $70,000. Sony has no excuse for selling their camera in the $150,000 range.

 

[Bastien Tribalat]

Damn right BUT the SRW9000 is announced at 60 000 dollars (in fact, I found the japanese price and converted it into dollars with xe.com tools).

 

[Andrew Rieger]

Ya, but for that price you get a 2k camera with a 2/3" sensor and with the sensor upgrade it has to be over six figures. for 60,000 I can get a Red complete with a pro prime kit and a bunch of accessories like tripods, dollys and cranes. I'm sorry but Sony really needs to reevaluate their marketing strategy. Arri was always pricy but even they have figured it out. Sony needs to follow suit. Everyone is talking about a Sony 4K cam but based on their prices for the 1080p cams, God only knows what outrageous price they will demand.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

Just because it's not a serious contender for low-budget indie filmmakers, doesn't mean it's not a serious contender for whoever needs to shoot broadcast TV stuff onto HDCAM-SR using a 2/3" camera that is cheaper than an F23.

I think the whole upgrade offer to a 35mm sensor / PL-mount / memory recorder is just an assurance that should broadcast TV production shift that way, the camera won't become obsolete suddenly, it's not so much the reason you'd buy one now.

The thing with these expensive cameras is whether they will make back their costs within two years of ownership. If your calculations show that it will, based on your market, then it's not a bad investment. For one person, investing 100K in equipment makes financial sense, and for another, it doesn't. It all depends on what your clients are demanding you shoot. Some of them want an HDCAM-SR tape at the end of the shooting day. For some indie filmmaker, no, it doesn't make a lot of sense.

When HDCAM-SR first appeared with the SRW1 deck several years ago, I asked Sony when they would add an SR deck into the F900 in order to record 4:4:4 at higher quality, instead of HDCAM's rather compressed 3:1:1. Well, this new camera is the result -- but it's a little late, and it's a bit awkward-looking, I didn't think the deck had to be so big. It's probably the last gasp of putting a 1/2" HD tape format in a camcorder, and everyone knows it, hence Sony's planned conversion to entice people to buy this thing. But honestly, unless you know exactly how you plan on making your money back on this thing and have the clients lined-up, ready to pay you to shoot with it, it's probably not the right camera for a lot of people.

I mean, for 2/3" broadcast TV work, 4:2:2 is fine, and I think the tapeless Panasonic 3700 makes a lot more sense than this camera, for that market. But I'm sure some people out there will buy it.

The real question is what will Sony's answer be to the Red One, Scarlet and the HDSLR revolution, for that particular market. They be better off thinking in terms of how to improve the EX1 design approach & price bracket to use a larger sensor.

 

[Andrew Rieger]

David, you are right, the Sony cams cater to a different market. TV right now is more suited to the Sony cam but a couple of shows have been having excellent results with Red and I agree with Jim that TV will be going to 2k and beyond so really, the DSMC system seems like the best future proof system at the moment. I can't imagine that tv will stay tape based for long, probably only a couple more years.

I always wondered why the Sony cams were so much more expensive. Are they made out of unobtanium or something? From what I have seen, the Epic really outperforms the F35 and a complete kit is $100,000 less than the Sony. I can't see how that makes sense for any market. I hope the Sony 4K cam comes down into the five figure range to compete with Red. When companies compete for our money, we all win. Arri is doing this with the Alexa cams.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

I always wondered why the Sony cams were so much more expensive.

You could put it the other way, why are Red cameras so much less expensive?

For a long time, Sony cameras were priced along the same lines as everyone else's broadcast equipment - and it was a situation where the market tolerated those prices. And the darn things really do have a lot going on inside of them, from a video engineering standpoint, you have a lot of capability of tweaking the camera's signal & recording for almost any broadcast application, which is necessary for some types of projects -- for example, live broadcast of the Olympics in HD.

But Red changed the market in a serious way by using new technologies to leapfrog the competition, and the falling economy and tightening budgets didn't help either, so now manufacturers are having to bring down their prices to match current expectations and demand. In some ways, new companies like Red -- and old companies new to digital like ARRI -- have the advantage here, they aren't beholden to decades of broadcast video tradition. On the other hand, Red and ARRI cater to a slightly different customer base than ones like TV news stations, for example, who buy large quantities of ENG gear every year.

Sony will either figure it all out, or they won't. But they do supply a lot of people with equipment and considering that only a third of U.S. households even watch HDTV today (I'm being put up right now in an expensive hotel in Chicago... and it doesn't have any HD!), 2K and 4K are not going to be dominant in households for a while, several years, and there are limits to how much producers really want to worry about future markets rather than existing ones. Short-sighted, maybe, but most people are focused on the present. Besides, I'm not sure I want to see "The Jersey Shore" at any resolution, but particularly not at 4K.

 

[Steve Das]

The real question is what will Sony's answer be to the Red One, Scarlet and the HDSLR revolution, for that particular market. They be better off thinking in terms of how to improve the EX1 design approach & price bracket to use a larger sensor.

David for someone who has shot features for the last 20 years you have
a damn good sense of the video industry..one of those companies ought
to hire you as a $$$ consultant...or you could publish a subscription newsletter.

 

[Graeme Nattress]

David's comments are always worth reading, which is why it's nice to have him here writing! Thanks David.

Graeme

 

[Mitch Gross]

I can tell you that we have multiple SRW9000 cameras in rental and they are all busy all the time. There's a value to all things if done properly.