It occurred to us when creating the Camera Mounted Recorders comparison chart that there is often confusion around different HD formats. In 2009, I wrote up a blog titled Making Sense of HD Formats that covered the different HD formats used today. But what I didn't go into was those other words and numbers that we often see associated with a video compression format: bit rate and bit depth.

Our NAB booth included the PMW-F3 with the new S-Log firmware from Sony installed. I was very impressed with what the new mode added to the camera and was delighted to show it off to guests in our booth. Some of our friends at Next Level Pictures stopped by, and I gave them a short demo. They were so impressed with the effect that they asked to take the camera out for a quick test, which I agreed to. Twenty-four hours later they came back with a plan to take Vegas by storm, and the result was an amazing test of the F3 and S-Log.

In 1975, Stanley Kubrick famously lit scenes in Barry Lyndon only by candlelight. To do it, he had to use triple-wicked candles for a bright flame, push the only filmstock at the time to 250 ISO and acquire a super-fast T0.7 Zeiss designed for NASA (he had an old Mitchell camera chopped up just to work with this lens). This allowed Kubrick to shoot under a keylight of just three footcandles.

Many people have been asking for suggestions on scene files for the AF100, so I put together a couple that I think you might find useful. In the process of creating these files, I also discovered several ways to reduce sensor noise. Reducing the detail levels helped, but to my surprise, changing the Matrix settings to NORM2 seemed to make the biggest difference.

In the second part of our three-part series on the Sony PMW-F3, I look into the camera's dynamic range and the various gamma modes that it offers. The test results were quite impressive, and I learned more about the different Cine Gamma modes built into the camera.

This week Sony announced their new NXCAM Super-35, aka the FS100. This little camera has the same sensor as the PMW-F3, but with the feature set and price point of the NXCAM line of cameras. The FS100 has a small body design, not much larger than an HDSLR, but Sony packed in all the features that we find in a regular video camcorder.

We've done a lot of testing with the Sony PMW-F3 camera and had great results. Our tests included sensitivity, dynamic range and low light performance. In a three part series, Mitch and I will cover all of these topics with the hopes of shedding light on what this camera can do.

A few weeks ago, Jesse Rosen wrote an article explaining the technical definition of LOG-encoded video and how it differs from a viewing gamma such as REC709. To better understand how you might use LOG capture in production, I shot this video illustrating the differences.

Sony's new PMW-F3 camera is a full-featured video camcorder with a Super-35mm size sensor. The F3 is suitable for many different styles of production and can be customized with lenses and accessories to make it an even more versatile solution. In this article, we present the many different lenses and accessories that can be used with the camera.