Sony PDW-F800 Review

Sony PDW-F800 with Canon 7.6-130mm HD ENG zoom with 2x extender (HJ17ex7.6B).
Photo by D.W. Leitner

Take a top-shelf 2/3in. Sony CineAlta HDW-F900R ($69,900 list, no viewfinder), swap its HDCAM tape transport for an optical disc drive, drop the results into the smaller body of a Sony PDW-700 XDCAM broadcast camcorder ($30,900 list, no viewfinder), and what do you have?

Sony announced its latest CineAlta shoulder-mounted 2/3in. camcorder, the PDW-F800 ($42,700, no viewfinder), last April at NAB, little more than a year after the PDW-700 was introduced, and production models are now available.

You can buy into my rough description of the F800 above, or you can think of the F800 as an 700 on steroids. (Outwardly, they're identical; their specs are nearly a match.) In either case, the fact that the F700 and F900R are, by now, known quantities facilitates this review.

Like the 700, the new F800 records long-GOP MPEG 422 (1920x1080, 4:2:2, 50Mbps, constant bit rate) and MPEG HD (1440x1080, 4:2:0, 35Mbps, variable bit rate) to Sony's six-year-old Professional Disc format.

VTR-like playback controls along with USB and Ethernet (file transer to FTP client).
Photo by D.W. Leitner

To enable very long takes (a 23GB Professional Disc recording 1080/24p MPEG422 will max out at 43 minutes), the F800 offers an impressive 30-second flash-memory cache for continuous recording even during disc changes—a trick borrowed from the F700. (Cache recording also enables time-lapse a.k.a. interval recording.)

The F800 ups the ante, however, with 24p (23.98) and standard SD (MPEG IMX and DVCAM), both costly options on the F700. It further adds Sony's Slow and Quick Motion for overcranking and undercranking, from 1fps to 48fps in 24p and 1fps to 60fps in 30p (MPEG HD mode only).

From the F900R, the F800 borrows dual optical filters with color-temperature correction (3200K, 4300K, and 6300K), user gamma settings—in addition to the four Hyper Gamma settings available in all three camcorders—plus Slow Shutter and image inversion for 2/3in. PL-mount adapters (works only for 1080p, not 1080i, 720p, SD). Slow Shutter and image inversion, incidentally, are options on the F900R.

Novel in the F800 is Focus Assist in the viewfinder, which places a white bar along one of the viewfinder's four black edges (your choice). This focus device changes length and slides back and forth to indicate best focus within a center-weighted zone.

An indication of the F800's intended purpose—field production as opposed to newsgathering—is the fact that F800's Detail Level factory-default setting of "0" yields a noticeably softer result than the same "0" on the F700 (per Sony).

23GB rewritable Professional Disc.
Photo by D.W. Leitner

I've shot with nearly all tape, magnetic disk, and flash-memory recording technologies in camcorders, but never optical disc. I live in New York City and see XDCAM HD camcorders in action on the streets all the time.

In other words, high time to lose my optical-disc virginity on a real shoot, one of a series of interviews about a rock 'n' roll subject begun earlier in XDCAM EX at 720/24p in HQ mode (35Mbps). That the versatile F800 could match these prior format choices made using it feasible.

Like all first encounters, I anticipated an initial awkwardness if not shyness, but this didn't happen. I'm not talking about the menu tree or switch layout—these are familiar from the F700 and comparable XDCAM and HDCAM camcorders—but rather the methodology of recording to optical disc.

Many if not most of us have already tried nonlinear capture with flash-memory camcorders, whether using Panasonic's P2, Sony's SxS, or AVCHD. With nonlinear, we've come to expect instant-start recording (no heads to spin or tape to thread), a visual register of thumbnails (sometimes called picons or picture-icons) for instant clip playback, and a workflow that demands careful planning, centered around the IT task of copying and recopying data so that expensive flash media can be reused.

It is also typical that these camcorders must first be rebooted—i.e., switched from camera to media functions—to access clip playback.

Working with Professional Disc media, however, to my surprise, was more like working with familiar videotape, only with the advantages of nonlinear recording intact.

To insert a Professional Disc (PD), I pressed the eject button, like tape. A slim door at the top of the F800 opposite the operator side popped open. I put a new disc in the slot and heard a zip, pause, zip, pause, zip, zip ... then FORMATTING DONE appeared in the viewfinder. Brisk and automatic.

I pressed record, and the F800 started instantly. It was dead quiet too.

When I wanted to review takes, no rebooting was required. Like any Betacam or HDCAM, I reached for the two rows of rubbery VTR controls under the handle on the operator's side—only instead of a VTR, they control the F800's optical disc drive.

I flipped open the cover that exposes the blue eject button through a hole, and the familiar F REV, PLAY/PAUSE, F FWD, PREV, STOP, and NEXT buttons appeared. Just like tape. Except that Professional Disc playback was instant. And because PD is nonlinear, PREV jumps back an entire clip while NEXT jumps forward one clip—again, instantly. (With each passing year, rewinding feels atavistic. Try explaining a rotary phone to a contemporary child—that's how rewinding and shuttling must seem to young videomakers who know only file-based recording.)

In other words, anyone comfortable with video deck control instinctively knows how to operate an F800's playback. On the other hand, anyone used to playback of nonlinear clips by scrolling through and selecting picons can instead press the dedicated Thumbnail button and navigate to their heart's content, using the rotary MENU knob at the front, the left/right arrow buttons near the Thumbnail button, or even the VTR-like controls themselves to select and play.

Like videotape, Sony's Professional Disc, based on Blu-ray technology, is contained in a protective cassette shell for convenience and durability. I didn't worry about scratching them, dropping them, getting them wet, or, for that matter, losing them. Like Betacam cassettes, they're sizable enough for old-fashioned, hand-written labels. This may seem like a little thing, but in the blast furnace of production, little conveniences have a way of adding up fast.

Best of all, while Professional Discs are rewritable and can be reused, they're meant to serve as permanent storage just like videotape. Both on the set and in the field, this makes unnecessary the time-consuming regimen of copying and recopying. (You can leave that collection of hard drives in the editing room.)

Sony says Professional Discs have been tested for an archival shelf life of at least 50 years. No hard-drive storage solution comes even close to this—nor does videotape, for that matter—while flash media are at present too expensive to consider as permanent storage. (This will change, but questions remain about the long-term stability of flash media.) Producers who feel more comfortable with a video master on the shelf instead of a hard drive full of copied files will immediately understand the appeal of PD's archivability.

I used single-layer 23GB discs, Sony PFD23A rewritable 23GB/2.4x speed, in my shoots with the F800. Street price was about a dollar a gig. Shooting 720/24p in HQ mode (35Mbps) yielded 65 minutes per disc. If I had chosen to shoot full 1080/24p in MPEG HD422, the recording time would have been about 43 minutes per disc. Sony also makes a dual-layer 50GB PD (PFD50DLA), which would have boosted 720/24p to 145 minutes and 1080/24p to more than 95 minutes.

PDW-F800 with 7mm Carl Zeiss DigiPrime for cine-style field production.
Photo by D.W. Leitner

Needless to say, footage quality was impressive. For my shoot, I used an ENG-style zoom, a Canon 7.6-130mm with 2x extender, f/1.8 (HJ17ex7.6B), but later experimented with several Carl Zeiss DigiPrimes (see photo), which made clear the true prowess of this economy CineAlta. (Hint: from the footage, you'd swear it was an F900R.)

Like the F700, the F800 at 9.5lbs. didn't feel particularly light. Lens and battery added considerable weight, of course. Because I work with a lot of small-format camcorders these days, perhaps I'd forgotten how heavy full-sized camcorders can get over a day of running around and shooting. Perhaps it's because I've already spent time with Sony's upcoming 2/3in. shoulder-mounted XDCAM EX PMW-350—which, at 7lbs., feels decidedly lighter. (Read more about the PMW-350.)

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I wasn't in love with the 3.5in. flip-out LCD screen either—either its position (rear-mounted, operator's side) or the fact that it has to be viewed dead-on. Viewed from above, shadow detail lightens and goes blue; from below, the image darkens. I think other Sony camcorders may do it better. There's also a small black-and-white LCD on the operator's side under the built-in loudspeaker that displays timecode, remaining disc capacity, and battery charge. Only thing is, this exact-same information is available about an inch away on the flip-out LCD, as well as in the viewfinder. Its seems to me that the purpose of this little redundant display would be better served if it were located not on the operator's side (blocked by his/her head) but the camera assistant's side of the F800, where it would be visible to crew. There it would add genuine utility to what is supposed to be an EFP camcorder.

My time with the F800 gave me a real-world appreciation of the several significant advantages to Sony's Professional Disc format. It occurred to me that optical discs are nothing less than the videotape of the 21st century.

So my advice is, if you need a 2/3in. CineAlta on a shoestring, look no further than the F800—which joins the archival paradigm of videotape (without tape) to the workflow benefits of file-based recording. The money you save not bidding on a used F900R will buy a lot of PDs, and they're a lot cheaper than HDCAM cassettes. Longer lasting and more compact too.

Company:Sony
pro.sony.com
Product: PDW-F800
Assets: Records long-GOP MPEG 422 and MPEG HD to Sony Professional Disc media; 30-second flash-memory cache; offers 24p (23.98) and standard SD (MPEG IMX and DVCAM); Focus Assist in the viewfinder.

Caveats: Flip-out LCD screen poorly placed and impractical; 9lb. weight makes camera feel heavy after a day's shooting.

Price: $42,700 (no viewfinder)