FS700 vs. EX1

[Matt Davis]

FS100 footage - hmmm. It can work, but I'm at my wit's end with the highlights. Sharpening in post? Yup, tried that. Where the highlights get wobbly, so the sharpening draws attention to them.

My feeling right now is that the C100 is a budget F3 and great for videography and the corporate market (but it's very basic). The FS100 and FS700 (especially the FS700) is more for the indie film crowd where you have control, and for corporates when you need creative options from slomo to slow shutter timelapse.

I'm kind of in a bind. If I knew about the FS700, I'd have held off the FS100 and stayed with the EX1R for a year. I jumped, it's a lovely machine, but it's 800 TV lines, and that's a step back for me. Huge bloody step up from 5D mk2, but not quite what I sold my clients on when I moved from Z1 to EX1.

FS700 has lots of bells and whistles. Does things C100 cannot dream about.

We need to decide: F3 picture quality but no S&Q, bad footage handover (C100 PSF sucks), lack of essential shooting modes like timelapse and slomo 60, or Z1 picture done right with amazing time bending and 50fps native, plus that absolutely mind bending 4K, 12 bit, raw image if you can rent/buy the bits at the back.

I withhold, but expect be grafitied by, any judgement of the FS700 in 4K mode, especially when downsampled to 2K. But at the current regime, will my clients pay me for C100 or FS700 rushes? They all love (and demand) EX1 rushes. They like, but are not excited by, FS100 rushes even though they are technically superior to DSLR rushes. But at what cost are FS700 4K 12 bit raw rushes going to enter the low to mid end Corporate market? How will they compare with this little cheerful penguin of a camera?