So you are thinking about stepping up to a 4K camera, and you’ve been eyeballing the Sony FS5 for a while. So far so good. The camera is cheap for what it offers, it has a very compact and lightweight form factor making it comfortable for shooting from the hands and if you absolutely need 14 stops DR and ultimate control over your image the Sony FS5 has a few tricks up its sleeve. Despite the fact that the camera shoots in a rather crippled Long-GOP 8bit 420 codec in UHD internally, that S35 sensors Sony have been milking for 6 years now can give you 4K and 2K Raw if you pony up some extra cash for a Sony FS5 4K Raw license ($499 at B&H) and an external Raw recorder like the Convergent Design Odyssey7Q+ $1795 without media (and you also need a $995 Raw Bundle license for the O7Q+ too).
Thanks to Frantic.Digital who’ve put a few short clips (spanning a few seconds) and totalling a whopping 1.3GB file size, you can now download some FS5 4K raw footage and grade it yourself before committing to the Raw license at least. Head over to their website here to do so.
They have also provided some Raw to ProRes clips (download here) that you can grade yourself here. Here’s the details on them:
This footage was shot by Isac Wetterö in S-log3 4k (DCI) with a cheap Quenox Nikon – E mount adapter and a 24mm Xeen lens. Thoughts on the image quality / DR in the comments below 🙂
In summary, here’s a breakdown of what you need to shoot 4K/60p or 2K Raw up to 240fps (or 4K/100fps in a 4 second burst) with the FS5:
- Sony FS5 camera (duh!) – $5,600 at B&H
- FS5 4K Raw License Key – $499 at B&H
- Odyssey7Q+ 4K raw recorder ($1,795 at B&H + 2 x512 GB SSDs $449 each)
- Odyssey Raw Bundle – $995 from Convergent Design (gives you FS Raw, Canon Raw, Alexa Classic Raw, I/O Raw and Panasonic Raw)
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