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Sony FS7


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Hi mungo, the issue you are having is caused by the GPS transmitter being located in the top of the FS7 and the first batches of UWP-D sets when used with the SMAD-P3 adapter .

Two remedies :

Temp fix is If you don't need GPS info you can turn off the transmitter via the camera

menus

Long term solution is to send your UWP set to the nearest Sony service center, Teaneck NJ or Burbank in LA and they will make a mod to increase the RF shielding to eliminate the noise you are hearing.

Note that all currently shipping UWP-D units have this mod installed and therefore don't have the GPS issue

Andrew

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Thanks for all the info everybody. The cameraman I'm working with is looking at buying an FS7 (with attachment) as a B Camera to his F5. I'm just trying to learn as much as I can about it now and hope there are no surprises (there will be).

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Hello,

 

Has anyone been able to work with the extension and freerun timecode?

Would like to know how stable internal TC is, or any other observations.

 

Thanks,

Rodrigo 

​Hi Rodrigo,

Just did 2 days with an FS7 and the V-lock addition. Thought I could jam sync in the morning and at lunch (like with EX/PDW), but within 2hrs the internal TC was out by about 10 seconds. Definitely need a lockit box / ERX

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The FS7 is pretty typical of all cameras made now re holding sync unaided.  With the external back that allows Vlock batteries you can feed it both genlock and TC, with which it performs very well.  TC alone will label your frames but won't keep the camera in sync with anything (re clock).  One great way to "sell" the rental of the extra back for the FS7 (without which there is no way of getting TC or clock into the camera) is to let the shooters understand that the small onboard Sony batteries that the camera uses when it doesn't have the VLock back really don't last very long at all--they kind of suck for any kind of doco/verite/fast moving shoot.  The Vlocks give the camera great runtime and help it balance better on the shoulder….

p

Edited by Philip Perkins
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One great way to "sell" the rental of the extra back for the FS7 (without which there is no way of getting TC or clock into the camera) is to let the shooters understand that the small onboard Sony batteries that the camera uses when it doesn't have the VLock back really don't last very long at all--they kind of suck for any kind of doco/verite/fast moving shoot.  The Vlocks give the camera great runtime and help it balance better on the shoulder….

+1

Filmed a police documentary series a couple of years ago, on a Sony F3 with small Sony batteries. As much as we were tailing police officers and chasing bad guys - we were chasing power sockets to charge the Sony batteries. Then we would go look for the charger which - in some hectic situations - was left behind.

Ah well, the camera man has since moved on to newer cameras and started using VLok batteries.

 

Cheers

Fred

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On 7/10/2015 at 0:36 PM, Philip Perkins said:

The FS7 is pretty typical of all cameras made now re holding sync unaided.  With the external back that allows Vlock batteries you can feed it both genlock and TC, with which it performs very well.  TC alone will label your frames but won't keep the camera in sync with anything (re clock).  One great way to "sell" the rental of the extra back for the FS7 (without which there is no way of getting TC or clock into the camera) is to let the shooters understand that the small onboard Sony batteries that the camera uses when it doesn't have the VLock back really don't last very long at all--they kind of suck for any kind of doco/verite/fast moving shoot.  The Vlocks give the camera great runtime and help it balance better on the shoulder….

p

Don't think V lock is essential, and it already balances quite well on your shoulder with smaller lenses. I've shot with an FS7 a few times, and three batteries last fine enough for a whole day. And buying a few extra ones is cheap enough. 

But if you do go with V mount, a much cheaper option is:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1100248-REG/lanparte_vbp_01_sony_v_mount_battery.html

Which is what I've seen fair few FS7 owners do. However... sound guys will be out of luck! Doesn't have TC.

On 7/21/2015 at 6:17 PM, ninjafreddan said:

+1

Filmed a police documentary series a couple of years ago, on a Sony F3 with small Sony batteries. As much as we were tailing police officers and chasing bad guys - we were chasing power sockets to charge the Sony batteries. Then we would go look for the charger which - in some hectic situations - was left behind.

Ah well, the camera man has since moved on to newer cameras and started using VLok batteries.

 

Cheers

Fred

I own a F3, while I use V locks (as a counterweight) which last me roughly a day's shoot, the BP-U ones are not too bad either. Just have a few spare at hand. 

It is nowhere near as bad as my BMPCC which I've used over a dozen batteries on a single day's music video shoot! ha

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On April 2, 2015 at 0:46 PM, John Blankenship said:

I'm working with an FS7 today and probably a couple of them tomorrow. I'm feeding time code via ERX, so don't know about cam's TC stability. It seemed to grab the external code with no fuss.

Any feedback from post concerning the FS7 sync?

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1 hour ago, mlemaudit said:

Any feedback from post concerning the FS7 sync?

I've fed FS7s many times since the above comment was written and I've yet to hear anything negative thing about sync from post -- hope it stays that way.  I previously used Denecke sync boxes, then on to the ERXs mentioned above, and now it's via the RX200s, which feed sub-frame accurate time code into the camera.  Therefore, any not overly long clips should be solid.  Extra long ones would depend partly upon the stability of the camera's clock, as Philip mentioned above.

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2 hours ago, Philip Perkins said:

Subframe accurate TC is nice but kind of wasted in this scenario (FS7 w/o genlock) since w/o genlock the relationship between the 2 recordings will be in flux all the time, getting more fluxy as the take gets longer.

Of course I totally understand that as I referenced in my post.  However, apparently the many varied projects I've worked on have had short enough takes that it seems not to have been an issue for many years now.

Multi-camera concert, or other long take shoots, are another story.  For them, genlock is a very good idea.  Even there, I've had a producer nix genlock (against my advice) and still be extremely pleased with the sync results in post.  

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Update.  I did a three camera shoot with these today, all very excited, different people running around doing different things.  Synced all the cameras as best I could in the morning, but only one FS7 had the TC back end.  So I moved the back onto each camera and set TC.

Halfway through the day, the camera that retained the TC back end had kept sync perfectly.  One camera without the back end lost about 3 seconds.  The other lost about 4 minutes.  So my recommendation is, if you find you're doing a shoot with one or more of these cameras, absolutely insist that each camera has its own back end.

Anyway, all I could do was get the three cameramen to shoot the TC display on my Nomad to attempt to show the editor roughly how far out each camera was.  Fortunately, the multi-camera material (where we were all filming the same thing) should be one or two takes only and very simple to sync back up.

I suppose I could have fed TC from my ERX2TCD's into a spare audio input, but truth is I don't have a cable that goes from minijack to XLR and if I'm honest, I don't plan to buy one either.

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Used these 4 of my last 8 days of work...

1st shoot... 3 cameras, all with v lock backs.. provided a TC box to each camera AND stereo audio feeds of my mix.

Nobody has cared about lack of genlock.. though I could have furnished... since I was using genlock capable sync boxes.

second shoot.. one man band, no accessory back... they wanted the audio output from my mixer, and a copy of my recording.

client on second shoot works this way all the time, and is comfortable that way.. I had brought TC box in case he wanted to add the AX accessory...

By breakaway tails (made by PSC) were very hard to line up with the core (on body) xlr sockets on the FS7.. thinking about using my right angle shorties as adapters next time.

I did find that lining up my tone at 50% mark on the camera meter (which had no scale visible) led to -10db peaks on dialog being dangerously near over modulating on the camera.... this was at line level our of 664, line level in settings on FS-7

I brought my mix down a little.

 

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20 hours ago, Lancashire soundie said:

I suppose I could have fed TC from my ERX2TCD's into a spare audio input, but truth is I don't have a cable that goes from minijack to XLR and if I'm honest, I don't plan to buy one either.

i find the tentacles great for exactly these kind of shots. light and cheap, set and forget, and if post want it's really easy to sync up.

and if they don't want to learn new tricks then they are welcome to sync manually  : )

chris

 

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1 hour ago, Christopher Mills said:

I did find that lining up my tone at 50% mark on the camera meter (which had no scale visible) led to -10db peaks on dialog being dangerously near over modulating on the camera.... this was at line level our of 664, line level in settings on FS-7

The FS7 does provide metering with a visible scale. Press "status" and scroll to the second page.

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