Sony PXW-X70 announced: Pro XDCAM version of AX100

[Ron Evans]

Originally Posted by Bill Petropoulos

Based off the price of 280,000 Yen that was posted on some Japanese sites, we should get it for under $3K.

I am sure its positioned to replace both the NX30U and the PMW100 which have a price spread of around $2000 to $2899. Since it is based on the AX100/CX900 batteries etc I would think about $2500 may be the price point as it does not have MPEG XDCAM which could be left to the PMW100 until people prefer XAVC anyway. That would make it similar to the price differences for the PXW-X180/160 compared to the NX5U and PMW150/160. The PMW160 at B&H is $6299 but the PXW-X180 is $4999 !!

Ron Evans

[Tony Maceo]

Originally Posted by Bill Petropoulos

Based off the price of 280,000 Yen that was posted on some Japanese sites, we should get it for under $3K.

Oh nice, didn't read about that. Seeing as this looks like a strong competitor to the XF205 ($4,000) not only in form-factor, but many "industry first" professional features... if street price is under $3K, these should be received well...even without 3 manual rings and short-ish zoom.

Besides the obvious run-n-gun ENG, docu, guerrilla-style filming... these types of small form factor cameras with pro level featuresets are great for the fast growing 2-4 multi-cam live streaming event producers. Remove the handles and it's a good chance you can fit 4 of them in a carry on bag. I really like my Sony HXR-NX3, but it takes up more gear space room than my three Panasonic TM-900 cameras. With that said, it's imperative for these to be "go-to" cams for vision mixer/live streaming, SDI needs to support 1080/30p like the Canon XF200/205. 720/30p would be great also. Ok, while I have Sony Insider ears... no "old tech" WIFi G/N... Wave 2 802.11ac please. 3x3 MIMO if you really want to blow us away. :-) Option to record proxy .mp4 to 2nd card slot simultaneously and assignable button to transfer last proxy file to WLAN/FTP... selectable AUTO Transfer with a queue up to 6 clips would be nice and "1-UP" the Canon XF200/205 similar feature.

Very good start with the NX3, and upcoming 180/160...let's keep the momentum going. Conventional video cameras are not dead!

[Bill Petropoulos]

Originally Posted by Tony Maceo

With that said, it's imperative for these to be "go-to" cams for vision mixer/live streaming, SDI needs to support 1080/30p like the Canon XF200/205.

I was set on getting an XF205, now I'm not so sure. The PXW-X70 is appealing.

Although...
I wrote the AX100 off because the manual focus wasn't useful for me.
For example, when fully wide, a half turn of the ring is enough to focus from near to far. But when zoomed in, it takes several turns to do the same. Manual focus is useless when you have to remove your hand over and over to rotate the focus ring, all while shaking the camera.

I hope Sony changes that characteristic with the PXW-X70.
I put the XF205 through its paces at NAB, the ergonomics were perfect.

[Ron Evans]

I never use manual focus ring on my small Sony's but use spot touch focus in manual which is fast. I accept that the LCD needs to be open for this though. Just wish I had touch spot focus on my NX5U. They have left this feature off the new PXW-X160/180 too.

Ron Evans

[Les Wilson]

The Red Shark review is revealing. This is looking to me like just another consumer feature checklist driven design and large DOF camera. One thing Panny did right on it's TM series in this form factor was to allow the lens ring to do iris. If you think about it, on this Sony design you have the servo for zoom and spot focus or AF for focus leaving the large ring with nothing to do while you are forced to use the piddly little side wheel for possibly the most frequent operation: riding the iris.

[Tony Tibbetts]

Why?!?! Why didn't they use the lens from the Sony RX10? this is so close to being an excellent little camera.

[Mark Fry]

Originally Posted by Bill Petropoulos

I was set on getting an XF205, now I'm not so sure. The PXW-X70 is appealing....

Although...
I wrote the AX100 off because the manual focus wasn't useful for me.
For example, when fully wide, a half turn of the ring is enough to focus from near to far. But when zoomed in, it takes several turns to do the same. Manual focus is useless when you have to remove your hand over and over to rotate the focus ring, all while shaking the camera.

I hope Sony changes that characteristic with the PXW-X70.
I put the XF205 through its paces at NAB, the ergonomics were perfect.

Usability is really important, perhaps more so in smaller cameras, which are more likely to show a wobble when you move your hand between controls. It's one of the reasons I've stuck with an XH-A1 so long, even though the XF100, and now the XF200 and X70 are my idea of the perfect size. (I cut my teeth on an XM1, which is still my bench-mark in many ways.) In my case, the crucial missing feature is the zoom-speed selector right beside the rocker switch.

[Emmanuel Plakiotis]

Has anybody nailed the differences between X70 and A100?

[Alister Chapman]

There's a lot of differences, mainly in the ergonomics. The X70 has a completely re-designed hand grip. There is a big fat focus-mag button that sits right under your index finger. A larger zoom rocker and a one-push iris control button just ahead of the zoom rocker. On the rear of the hand grip there is a small joystick that sits under your thumb and controls the menus. The hand grip is much beefier and this makes the camera much easier to hold single handed.

The LCD panel is higher resolution than the AX100 LCD.

Other difference - XAVC 10bit 422 long GOP codec. AVCHD and SD DV.
Future live streaming capability via UStream (1st half 2015).
Full size HDMI and HDSDI
The majority of the buttons are assignable.
6 Picture Profiles, with adjustments of gamma, matrix, detail and aperture.
Menu structure is similar to FS700.
S&Q motion from 1 to 60fps, so you can speed stuff up and slow it down.
Dual card slots that can be controlled independently. You can have dual record with one slot triggered from the handle rec control and the other from the body rec control. Or relay record where as one card fills the camera will switch to the other slot.
Histogram.

The codec is stunning. the 10bit 50Mbps 422 long GoP is squeeky clean, so you can really push the footage in post if you want. Probably just as well as like the AX100 the highlight handling is not the best in the world. After the shoot I discovered that adding in some black gamma in the picture profiles really helps as you can then expose a little lower. Overall you can afford to be slightly under exposed and then bring the footage up in post.

[Lawrence Bansbach]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

The codec is stunning. the 10bit 50Mbps 422 long GoP is squeeky clean, so you can really push the footage in post if you want. Probably just as well as like the AX100 the highlight handling is not the best in the world. After the shoot I discovered that adding in some black gamma in the picture profiles really helps as you can then expose a little lower. Overall you can afford to be slightly under exposed and then bring the footage up in post.

Any word on which codec 4K will be using? I hope not XAVC-S, but the 10-bit pro XAVC long-GoP codec Sony announced nearly a year ago but gave no specifics on. The data rate has got to be lower than the PXW-Z100's 600-Mbps intraframe data rate (at 60p), but more than the 60 Mbps of the AX100. I saw one estimate of 150 Mbps. And I hope full 4K is supported.

[Ron Evans]

150Mbps at 60p is what my FDR-AX1 shoots at with XAVC-S 420 8bit so I would expect 10bit 422 to be a little more. This looks to be a lovely replacement for my NX30U.

Ron Evans

[Andy Wilkinson]

First review of the PXW-X70 - Alister Chapman's take on it.

The Sony PXW-X70. Sometimes good things come in small packages! | XDCAM-USER.COM

[Alister Chapman]

I really don't think your going to get anything above 100Mb/s. Do remember the media is only SDXC, it's not SxS and it's nowhere near as fast as SxS. To date Sony have not allowed any camera to record more than about 60Mb/s to SDXC. They might bump it up a bit to 100Mb/s, but I would be very surprised if they go above that. But, I've been wrong before.

[Lawrence Bansbach]

Originally Posted by Jack Zhang

It is highly unlikely we will see 4K60p from this camera since it shares the same encoders as the AX100. The ASICs could be hard-coded to be limited in 4K to 30p. Try to encode 60p and the thing would overheat. Remember the TM700's active fan?

If it's the same sensor as in the RX10, then it scans at 4Kp60. It might be interesting if the the bottleneck were the SD cards and Sony planned to enable 4Kp60 via the HDMI 2.0 port. But the Bionz X may indeed be limited to 4Kp30. (Interestingly, the Bionz X can process raw at 14 bits.)

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

I really don't think your going to get anything above 100Mb/s. Do remember the media is only SDXC, it's not SxS and it's nowhere near as fast as SxS. To date Sony have not allowed any camera to record more than about 60Mb/s to SDXC. They might bump it up a bit to 100Mb/s, but I would be very surprised if they go above that. But, I've been wrong before.

That's too bad. UHS-II speed class 3 SDXC/SDHC cards have a minimum write speed of 30 MBps (240 Mbps). Maybe the higher rates will be available via the 3G-SDI or HDMI 2.0 port.

[Jos Svendsen]

@Aiister:
Could you confirm that it is the same optics as AX100? Everybody is writing about the 12 x zoom, but nothing about actual zoom range in mm or the real aperture of the optics. Is it a constanf F2.8 or F2.8-4.0 like AX100?

Thanks
JOSS