Season has started, and I didn't have a camera until today. Just receiced my new Sony PXW-X70. This camera is sweet. I haven't had a chance to put it through it's paces, but it is basically everything I was looking for. It's extremely compact. Basically that same size as the XA20. It's light weight and has very nice ergonomics. The build quality seems to be very good. It's an XDCAM, so it's pretty well designed and full of professional features. The body is basically similar to the AX100, but it has improved ergonomics plus all the added pro features like the handle and XLR audio. It has the larger 1" sensor in it, so it should do well in low light and also give me more flexibility with the shot. It has a very nice shallow depth of field for b-roll shots, but you can also open up the iris to get a more full depth of field in focus. On top of that, it will have the option to upgrade to 4k by next year. I'm not sure of the cost of the upgrade, but at least there is an option for that. I'm pretty sure I might be one of the first consumers to have this camera in their hands. I've been following this camera on a couple forums and there are a lot of people that have pre-ordered it and still haven't heard from their dealer about when it will ship. I purchased mine from Campbell's Camera and the had their stock next day aired into them and shipped mine out the same day they received it. Hat's off to Campbell's Camera for excellent customer service. Here' she is:
To say I'm jealous would be a understatement. That thing is absolutely bad freaking ***. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Had some time to play with it tonight. So far, it's what I had hoped it would be. It seems like it will do pretty well in low light. I would say, it see's better in low light than I do, and that's all that really matters. It has the IR Night Shot for doing early morning interviews in the stand. It does a nice job of illuminating out to about 20 feet or so, but its kinda like a spot light so the center of the frame is lit up, but the outside will be darker. Still, it's a useful feature. I was able to use my Galaxy S3 to operate the camera remotely. Seems to work pretty well and you can connect it by just touching the phone to a spot on the camera. One issue is that it shuts off the LCD screen if you are using the phone/tablet to control it. A positive is that if you push a button on the camera, it converts back to the controls on the camera. It actually really seams to work well in Auto, I mean really well. It doesn't hunt focus and it pulls focus in a very smooth and slow manner. I could never use auto on my XHA1s, but it may be possible. If your running auto, you can over ride the auto, and run the Iris, shutter, or gain in manual with the touch of a button. There's also the touch focus feature that will be useful. I should have all my accessories in tomorrow, aside from the remote, so I'm hoping to get some footage this weekend. On a side note, I ordered the Manfrotto MVH500 to replace the 701HDV that I sold. That seems to have been a mistake. The 500 has a much longer attachment plate. It's so long that the plate covers the battery release and part of the bottom of the battery. I have the shorter plate that works with the 701, but it is too short for the 500. It will work, but if you let it slide all the way down, it could just fall out. I can't risk that so the 500 is going back and I'm looking for another alternative.
