Sony has recently brought out a successor to the Z1, the HVR-Z7. I took it out recently, but only had it for a few hours, to see what Sony had come up with in the three years since the launch of its predecessor. I shot some footage, both indoor and in high-contrast pre-sunset conditions, but haven’t had chance to fully test the camera yet.
The most obvious difference between the Z1 and the Z7 is that the newcomer takes interchangeable lenses. The Zeiss lens that comes with the camera is a great lens – 12X zoom, 4.4-52.8mm (equivalent to 34-384mm in 35mm terms). It offers good control over focusing, with real lens markings, so you can do repeat moves. It also allows you the option of using a continuous focusing ring, which gives you a kind of semi-autofocus setting, whereby the camera is in auto, but you can refocus manually. Personally, though, I’d only use two of the modes – full autofocus and manual focus.
Of course you can also add specialist lenses to the camera, and there’s a 3.3-26.4mm (24-192mm) wide angle zoom available separately. It is possible to use 1/2in or 2/3in lenses with the camera by using a lens adaptor such as the Fujinon ACM-17 (for 2/3in B4-mount lenses) or ACM-19 (for 1/2in lenses), which people may have used with the JVC HDV cameras. They’re pretty compact, and the ACM-17 will set you back around $1400. If you use a Sony Alpha digital SLR, the Z7 can also take lenses designed for that.
Changing the lens should have been a very simple exercise; however, in practice it proved to be very fiddly. Just as with a standard PL mount, you are meant to line up a notch on the lens flange with a locating pin on the camera body, and then rotate the locking ring until the lens is secure. Fine in theory, but not so simple in practise. The manual warns that an improperly secured lens might come off, and so an additional plastic securing tab is also attached to the camera. But this is pretty flimsy, and it’s easy to twist the lens even when in the ‘secure’ position. That being said, the lens stayed firmly in place for me once the lever was moved into the lock position.
New layout
The other design difference between the Z1 and the Z7 is that they’ve moved all the buttons from the rear of the camera to the side. This is where you’d expect them to be on a full sized ENG camera, and they’re there for a reason! It was a constant irritation with the Z1 if you wanted to change anything during a shot. You’d have to step back from the camera and fiddle around at the back. With the Z7, the controls for menu, white balance, gain and audio levels are on the side, so you can manipulate these while keeping your eye on the action.
And now that there are no buttons at the back, there’s room for all the outputs to be put in one place. One gripe I’ve always had with the smaller sized cameras is that you often have to hunt around for the Firewire output or headphone socket; they were never in the same place. The Z7 features HDMI, iLink, component, audio, LANC. Everything’s there and it’s easy to find. Even the on button is in a far more sensible position on the side. Much better than it was before. The tape transport component is neatly tucked away on the opposite side of the camera, which is a much better design than the Z1.
If you’re shooting tape at the moment, but aren’t sure whether to make the upgrade to solid state, the Z7 offers both. There’s a unit that connects to the back of the camera that takes industry standard compact flash memory cards, not the SxS cards used in the recently released Sony EX1 XDCAM camera, or the P2 cards used by Panasonic, making them around a third of the price of SxS cards per gig.
The camera can record HDV, DVCAM and DV, and in a nice touch you can record to the CF card and tape at the same time, and each medium can record any format, regardless of what the other is recording. Another nice feature is that, if you’re recording an event that goes on for a while, the memory card will kick in to record footage while you’re changing your tape. And of course, the timecode on the two is identical.
With Sony’s EX1, there are massive speed advantages over tape when it comes to getting the footage into the NLE – a few minutes to transfer 16GB of data (around an hour’s shooting), as opposed to capturing footage off a MiniDV tape in real time. But the downside, as with any of the recent cameras that use a variation on the CF card, is that there’s no built-in archive as there is with tape – if you want to reuse the cards (and unless you’re Soderbergh you probably will), your most likely low-budget option is filling up more and more firewire drives with your footage, with the possibility of a future IT disaster in store. What’s neat about the Z7 is the ability to record to both card and tape simultaneously and then work from the card data in post. The tape can be removed, labeled, then put away in case you need to redigitize the footage at a future date.
The sensors
Instead of the CCDs of the Z1, the Z7 uses three 1/3in CMOS sensors. Like the Z1, these are 960x1080 pixel sensors, interpolated to give a 1920x1080 image size. Sony claims the method the Exmor CMOS chips use to do this is a significant improvement over the pixel-shifting used in the Z1 and other CCD cameras, enabling much less noisy low-light performance, but this is something we’ll have to test properly when we get our hands on the camera for longer.
Whereas the Z1 wasn’t true progressive – it essentially chucked away a field from the interlaced frame to get a progressive look, reducing the resolution in the process – the Z7 is true progressive. However, disappointingly, the Z7E (Europe) offers only 25p recording, whereas the Z7U (USA) offers 24p and 30p, so the ‘universal camera’ approach of the Z1 has been abandoned.
In progressive you can choose between ‘scanning mode’ and ‘native mode’, where the image is both scanned and recorded as a progressive image. The in-between model, the Sony V1, offered only scanning mode. Coupled with gamma curve correction, this makes the Z7 a possible contender in the indie film market, whereas the Z1 was better suited to documentary-style shooting.
One thing I have to say is that the LCD monitor is fantastic. It’s a smaller monitor than the Z1, but size really doesn’t matter; it’s so sharp and so clear – you can judge focus and color very well. I also had a Sony EX with me when I took out the Z7, which has already established itself as having the best LCD by far in this category, and it was difficult to tell any difference. In fact, I suspect it’s the same monitor. It seems to handle the contrast range really very well.
The shoot
I took the camera out to Brunswick Square in Hove, which was a good location to do a quick contrast test with the camera. I was shooting in the last half hour before sunset, so there’s a nice low sun and high contrast surroundings, so it was quite interesting to see how the camera copes with deep shadow and intense winter sunlight.
The foreground was cast in shadow, with bright sunlight hitting Georgian terraced houses beyond. To further complicate things, these buildings are painted in a very light yellow gloss paint that reflects a lot of light, the kind that has hitherto been the sworn enemy of DV cameras! So, we had a situation with shadow on one half of the square and the late afternoon sun setting on the other side. Without changing the exposure, I did a quick pan around the whole square to see how it coped with the huge contrast range. Not half bad, I’d say. A lot of the information is there, as you can see from the frame grabs. It all worked out very nicely.
The lens has a digital extender. The moon was out, and I wanted to go slightly closer, so I can just flick it and get a digital moon. There are times I can see in documentary filmmaking where you want that little extra – it is only a little extra, it doesn’t go too far – but it still gives quite a good little picture.
Another nice feature that you normally get on ENG cameras, but don’t usually get on prosumer-type cameras, is that the ND filter is a real filter – it’s not electronic. There’s a dial you can use to switch between filters. And using an optical filter against the sunset gave a much better quality than you’d get with an electronic filter. The camera is certainly an interesting proposition for anyone wanting to upgrade to a Z1 – or who was considering a Z1 purchase. The cost is not much different from the new Sony EX camera, and for many people who might be considering that camera, the Z7 will also be in the running.
So what are the key differences? Well, first the chips. The EX uses three 1/2in full raster 1920x1080 CMOS sensors, whereas the Z7 uses three 1/3in 960x1080 sensors interploated to 1920x1080. Although on my brief shoot, the Z7 performed extremely well in lowlight conditions, I’d predict that when we carry out side-by-side comparisons, the EX will have the edge.
The spec of the EX recording system is higher generally. Both use MPEG compression, with the Z7 conforming to the 25Mbit/s HDV format, and the EX offering a greater 35Mbit/s bandwidth. You’d have to blow up EX images pretty large before detecting any compression artefacts. The EX also offers HD-SDI, outputting 4:2:2 color space rather than the 4:2:0 color space of its internal memory stick and of the Z7’s HDV recording.
For those reticent about making the move to memory cards, the hybrid system of the Z7 allows a natural progression from tape to solid state – as well as a built-in archive. And if you’re upgrading a camera such as the Z1, you’ll still be able to play back your old HDV tapes. The Z7 also offers lens interchangeability, which of course the EX doesn’t. The built-in lens of the EX is pretty good, so of course this is only going to be an advantage to those who may want to use more specialist lenses.
The other issue is balance. The Z7 is a much easier camera to handhold than the EX. It combines the good balance of the Z1 with a much better control layout, so you can adjust just about everything without moving away from the camera. The EX is left-heavy, so you unless you have really big hands and can get right underneath it, you need to use both hands to balance it, which makes manipulation of the controls while handholding quite tricky.
In all, the Z7 is a pretty darn good upgrade to the Z1. Full 1920x1080 chips would have been nice, and they could have made changing the lens slightly easier, but other than those quibbles, it really does feel like Sony has taken feedback from users about design and usability.
The Z1 is a great documentary, run’n’gun-style camera, but the lack of true progressive limits it for indie filmmaking. I’d happily use the Z7 to shoot a short film or even an indie feature if I was going to use a lens adaptor and stick 35mm lenses on it, and in that case I’d want true progressive. OK, you don’t get 24p and 25p on the same model, which is disappointing, but it could still prove very useful for low-budget indie filmmaking.
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Alex WakefordAlex Wakeford is an award-winning DP who has shot numerous commercials, over 30 short films and a US independent feature film. He recently shot indie horror flick Credo. |