New Sony NEX-EA50EH Announcement

[Ron Little]

I really don’t see this as a shoulder mounted camera the weight of the cam is not really on your shoulder. It is more like a stabilizer or a third point of contact.

[Noa Put]

It's more like an Sony EX3 or the older Canon XLH1, both are also semi- shoulder camera's but not really as all the wheight is still in your hands, a friend of mine has a EX3 and he says that he can't film longer then 5 minutes handheld before it gets too heavy.

[Ron Little]

The first time I saw the shoulder extension I thought to myself “great place to mount the Nanoflash and battery."

[Alister Chapman]

Been out and about in Hong Kong shooting with a pre-production EA50 and I really quite like it. It is not an FS700 or FS100, the image quality is not quite that good. The pictures are contrasty and it's not as sensitive. It's really nice to have the same familiar menu's as the FS100 including the same picture profiles so you can dial in a look to suit your needs. The servo zoom is OK. It's not perfect, there is a picture shift when you change zoom direction and some small focus shifts (these should be significantly reduced in production units). It was really nice to have a functioning zoom on a big sensor camera. But even if you don't have a zoom lens the EA50's 2x electronic zoom works really well and I didn't notice any significant change in image quality when using the digital zoom. The camera is front heavy, but it's not a heavy weight camera so I didn't find it too bad to use. The buttons and switches are easy to access when it's on your shoulder. I missed having builtin ND filters and had to resort to using the shutter to deal with brighter scenes and there are no special functions like S&Q so no time-lapse or slow motion other than by shooting at 50p/60p and slowing it down in post. I did shoot some time lapse by just letting the camera roll and then speeding it up in post. It does have a few slow shutter speeds so I was able to use these in some of the night sequences I shot for a blurry effect. I'll be writing a longer more detailed review in due course and posting some sample clips and frame grabs.

[Michael Liebergot]

Alister, how did the EA50EH hold up in low light?
I realize it won't be as clean as the FS100/700, but does it hold up well?

[Lee Mullen]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

Been out and about in Hong Kong shooting with a pre-production EA50 and I really quite like it. It is not an FS700 or FS100, the image quality is not quite that good. The pictures are contrasty and it's not as sensitive. It's really nice to have the same familiar menu's as the FS100 including the same picture profiles so you can dial in a look to suit your needs. The servo zoom is OK. It's not perfect, there is a picture shift when you change zoom direction and some small focus shifts (these should be significantly reduced in production units). It was really nice to have a functioning zoom on a big sensor camera. But even if you don't have a zoom lens the EA50's 2x electronic zoom works really well and I didn't notice any significant change in image quality when using the digital zoom. The camera is front heavy, but it's not a heavy weight camera so I didn't find it too bad to use. The buttons and switches are easy to access when it's on your shoulder. I missed having builtin ND filters and had to resort to using the shutter to deal with brighter scenes and there are no special functions like S&Q so no time-lapse or slow motion other than by shooting at 50p/60p and slowing it down in post. I did shoot some time lapse by just letting the camera roll and then speeding it up in post. It does have a few slow shutter speeds so I was able to use these in some of the night sequences I shot for a blurry effect. I'll be writing a longer more detailed review in due course and posting some sample clips and frame grabs.

Will you share the footage with us all Alister? :)

[Ron Little]

What about the aliasing and moire?

[Kate Spiegel]

Hi, if there is a 2x digital zoom for primes, what would a 50mm prime turn in to zoomed in at 2x?

[Kate Spiegel]

Well it appears that it would make the 50mm lens a 100mm lens.

[Randy Johnson]

I shoot wedding and I find this camera very exciting. I currently use Panasonics AG-HMC 150s I cant wait to get back to a shoulder mount camera I am kinda old school and the hmc-150 was my first (and last) hand held camera. I am just a little nervous on the image quality, How can I one chip deliver accurate colors equal to a 3 chip?

[Noa Put]

and the hmc-150 was my first (and last) hand held camera

The NEX-EA50EH is still a handheld camera, the shoulderpad just extends the back of the camera and that you can lay on your shoulder but all the camera's wheight will be in your hands, just like any "handicam". The only advantage out of that formfactor is that you could hold it a bit more stable but I doubt you can do that for extended times.

[Randy Johnson]

I use Anton/Bauer batteries for my light and wireless at least theres a place to mount stuff like that unlike my current camera.

[Craig Seeman]

Finally NEXEA50 test footage (preproduction) posted somewhere.
Johnnie Behiri grouses about the lack of ND filters (Sony had to GET that people want these even if it impacts form factor and price) and more notably he describes rolling shutter as severe. If you read the comments it's likened to the earliest DSLRs used for video (not good).

"Pepephon"- Sony NEX-EA50 pre-production test footage. on Vimeo

[Alister Chapman]

Well I've had the review and frame grabs up on my site for a while.
NEX-EA50 Review. Great Value For The Money. |
There is some skew, more than most dedicated video cameras, but I didn't find it to be horrendous. Moire and aliasing were well controlled. I have some video clips but these were shot for a specific purpose so I can't put them online just yet. Overall I thought the images I came away with were really pretty good considering the price point.

[Craig Seeman]

Thanks for that info Alister.
It's so hard to judge a criticism when there's no example of it to judge. Behiri's footage looks reasonable even when played at 1080 on Vimeo. It's not skewing in his slow slider/dolly shots.
It looks like it might be a reasonable camera in lower budget Corporate, Doc, ENG work.

For me, an important test would be to see how the skewing looks in "braced against the shoulder" work following a not so rapidly moving subject.

I think the market is for those of us looking at a kitted out DSLR vs something that has a "proper" camera form factor that doesn't have to be "put together" for a shoot.