Click here to view the embedded video.

What It Is:

A great replacement for the Sony EX1/EX3 and any DSLR for filmmaking. Like the offspring of the EX3 and the Canon 7D, with the ability to use most any lens you might have access to. A camera with a real workflow for shooting. A true 1080/60p device. A low-light rock star.

What It Isn’t:

A DSLR killer (although it is pretty close). The Arri Alexa Mini or the RED Epic Mini. Why? Read on…

Why The FS100:

I loved shooting on my Sony EX3 camera but was always striving, even since my DVX100 days, to have more cinematic images. This led to the Letus Elite and Canon FD 35mm lenses, which I used to great success on my first feature film TRIUMPH67. But this rig was a beast in terms of weight and size and wasn’t convenient to set up or tear down. Plus, no matter what anybody says, the motorized adapter was noisy (audible) in close quarters.

This led to adoption of the Canon DSLR cameras for the film look on some projects, but I grew to despise the dual workflow of video AND audio and the problems inherent in the capture due to aliasing and moire — which was so damn ugly to my eye. And the short focus throw of the lenses was highly frustrating. You shoot with DLSRs and love it? Great. I do too… When I shoot people or scenes with depth of field. But sometimes clients just want you to get the shot of the person or the business or the architecture and they might actually want to see the details in sharp focus. Guess what? It can look like sh*t — with aliasing and moire all over the place, no matter what you do. This isn’t acceptable to me. I do not like that, even if you use a filter in post to minimize the effect.

When I heard the news about the new Sony F3 and the FS100, I was very excited. The minute there was a demo in town, I was over there sliding my sweaty hands all over the cameras and testing their quality (I brought one of my own SxS cards and captured some footage to load up at home). They were very promising and stunning, with depth of field, usable size, quiet operation and full video camera features! (Yeah, DLSR boys, things like zebras and peaking and audio meters and XLR inputs, things we used to have but gave up to get an eyelash in shallow focus). I ordered one as soon as I could sell my EX3 to somebody who needed it (which didn’t take long, it is still a rockin’ camera system).

The day after I received the FS100 was my first shoot with it. After staying up late loading custom picture profiles (thanks AbelCine!) and tweaking the settings (very much similar to the EX3), I was off and running. I thought the form factor of the cube would be annoying, but it isn’t. The SDHC cards are just fine. The stock lens isn’t half bad. The LCD is sharp and bright. And having full audio controls is a true joy again. In the past couple weeks I’ve shot something like 60 hours on it and loved it!

The things that are not cool are the following:

• Design (supposedly) influenced by DLSR shooters. Not perfect. The LCD on the top? Stupid. No reason they could not have put it on the left side like any other cam. Some button locations? Stupid.
• The 18-200mm kit lens. Sure, the image is nice and sharp and the autofocus DOES work surprisingly well, but the infinite focus ring BLOWS. Ugh, I hate it. And it is velocity sensitive so it is either really slow or really fast. Trying to repeat a focus pull will be frustrating!
• The hand grip works fine but feels a bit wimpy. Plus, it attaches with a mini plug! Ugly and stupid. And it only has a a start/stop button. Which brings me to…
• The Expanded Focus button is in the wrong spot entirely! It should be on the right hand like on the EX3 so you can pop it on and off while focusing with your left hand! Ugh. So lame.
• You cannot rename your Picture Profiles. Really?! On the EX3 I had them named something simple, like “Daylight” or “Night” or “Wedding” so it was OBVIOUS what they were for. Now I have to remember that “PP3” means… well… something I set up… for some reason… Bright Daylight? Kids? Broccoli?
• No Sony software on OS X, like the XDCAM Browser. Hey Sony! Wake up. If you can’t make custom software, then at least add AVCHD support to the XDCAM software you already have. We need to view, copy, move, save stills and the like without always having to work inside our NLE!
• You shoot outdoors in daylight? You will NEED an ND filter like the Fader ND or the Genus or in your matte box. Absolutely. Don’t even try to shoot without one.

What I love about the FS100:

• Impressive image quality and depth of field. The huge sensor means great shots are within easy reach.
• The shallow flange depth. Don’t know what flange depth is? Doesn’t matter. What it means is that you can use most ANY existing lens (Sony, Canon, Nikon, Minolta, Leica, PL, etc, etc) and make beautiful imagery. The Novoflex Nikon adapter is particularly nice as it de-clicks the lens.
• The batteries can literally last all darn day.
• Discreet size. Shooting downtown on a busy street is no big deal.
• Multiple mounting points on top and bottom, for stuff like the Berkey System plates and rigs (get ‘em, they are great!).
• The video looks amazing! Did I mention that already?
• The low light performance is jaw-dropping good and makes the cats in my neighborhood feel inadequate. I can capture more light at 30db with a custom profile THAN I CAN SEE WITH OWN EYES. Somehow they put feline visual technology into the FS100 sensor. This is amazing for run-and-gun or documentary shooting.
• Full 1080/60p

In Summary:

Sure, I have some strong opinions about this camera (and the dSLRs), but only because they are actually so good (and could be even better). The Sony FS100 is, all-in-all, a huge winner that I can highly recommend. It isn’t a DSLR killer because of the cost factor (pro stills shooters will already have investments in the bodies and lenses). It isn’t a mini-Alexa or mini-RED because it lacks ProRES and only goes to 60p. But, If you are tired of dual-system capture or quality issues with DSLR cameras, you’ll love the Sony FS100. If you are an indie filmmaker and can’t afford the F3, RED or Alexa, you’ll love the Sony FS100. If you want great low-light performance, you’ll love the Sony FS100. If you already have DSLR accessories (external monitors, shoulder braces, follow focus, etc) you’ll be pleased to know that much of it will work just fine with the FS100. Now get shooting!

Note: This is a repost from a post I authored at the TRIUMPH67 website.

Upon first hearing about crowdfunding via kickstarter I was obsessed with how I was eventually going to put it to use on a film project. I had thought it would be for a documentary project that has been in the works for several years, but when we got close to finishing post-production on TRIUMPH67 and ran dry of funds (and time) I reexamined what I thought I knew and realized that kickstarter would be the perfect fit for us to bring the feature film project to completion.

I started following and making mental notes of the various successful campaigns, especially film/movie projects, and began an outline of my favorite techniques and approaches. I stumbled upon another Minnesota filmmaker in the process of a kickstarter campaign, Phil Holbrook and TILT, and made a contribution. His group really seemed involved and motivated and it was easy to become engaged. I was particularly thrilled to see them meet their goal of $15,000!

Then, one project really lit a proverbial fire under my ass: an extremely detailed writeup about funding a book publishing project called “KickStartup” by Craig Mod (thanks for the inspiration, Craig!).

Not only did Craig provide a scintillating story with great pictures, he did some really useful analysis on his numbers and figured out what pledge levels were most productive. I decided it was extremely spot-on, and jived with much of what I had found elsewhere, and went ahead and created our pledge levels at what were the most apparent productive levels: $25, $50, $100, $250, $500, $1000 and $5000. We knew it was a stretch to get anything at or above the $5000 level, but we thought it looked good to have on our campaign! And who knew, maybe some deep-pocketed benefactor would emerge and desire to help TRIUMPH67 (nope, they didn’t).

We launched our kickstarter post-production campaign on October 5th, 2010 and set it for a standard 30-day duration. I would recommend this length as any shorter and it might be hard to build up enough awareness for your project and any longer and you (and your audience) will likely run out of energy to continue the fundraising. However, if you truly believe you can do it in a shorter amount of time, go for it. You will be working hard every day for every dollar in your fund. Can you dedicate 30 days of your life to this? Let me answer that for you: Yes! Of course. This is like free money! Of course, you have rewards you need to fulfill for each pledge and it takes a lot of your time, but you know what I mean. And you are building your audience!

If you read Craig’s story of his campaign you saw that he outlined their strategy for promotion of their fundraiser. They focused on twitter, facebook, emails and online media (blogs and magazines). Their daily approach of tweets and status updates were bolstered with four unique emails to their contact list, each of which meant an approximate increase of an extra $500 in donations. Nice, especially considering that sending emails is super low-cost or even free! The really inspirational bit of information on their strategy was that they got their campaign mentioned on at least fifteen different blog or magazine sites (mainly dealing with design and art). That kind of push and publicity would be phenomenal for any independent filmmaker and we hoped for some of the same.

The T67 Analysis

Here’s the rundown on how we approached our promotion: We knew that the director, Dan, and myself could tweet and facebook on a daily basis, along with supporting help from a few close people. This is where we really took advantage of HootSuite to keep track of what we were doing in separate locations and to not send out redundant posts. Brilliant. Dan and I could quickly and easily see what each other had already posted or scheduled to post and not repeat the same messages.

We had hoped to do more full-on email blasts, but we only did one official TRIUMPH67 email a few days before the end of the campaign, which, tied with the impending end of our campaign, gave us a boost of over $1000 compared to the previous day (which was a Sunday, by the way (weekends were always more challenging)). We did, however, act on our own personal email contacts and sent out several direct messages to our friends, families and coworkers. The great hope we had of getting supportive mentions in media or movie blogs never panned out at all, mostly due to our own lack of effort in this area. This is something I’d recommend not skipping over in your own campaign — build your audience and followers at every step in your filmmaking process and get some media mentions!

Our biggest boost, and perhaps our biggest secret recipe that we stumbled upon and we are now revealing directly to you, was in engaging our connections on Facebook in direct chats. Since this personal, one-on-one communication was almost as good as being face-to-face with our acquaintances, they were far more likely to agree to a pledge. Maybe it was too hard to say no directly to us in this manner or maybe the personal connection was just really convincing, but once we got on this groove, we had our single best day in pledges with over $2800 raised (about 24% of our total)!

In summary, we worked our 30 days pretty hard and consistently, although we weren’t terribly engaged during the four days we were at the wonderful Flyway Film Festival screening our work-in-progress cut of the film and it was patently obvious — we only raised $200 during those four days. Remember, you will work for every pledge.

If you think that you will build it and they will come, you are sadly mistaken.

When you launch your own crowdfunded fundraising campaign, be ready to devote every free moment to working it! We found that tweeting and facebooking at least twice a day seemed to be the right amount of social mentions on our part (with additional retweets or rementions a bonus on top of that) and didn’t seem to alienate or annoy anybody with the frequency. We definitely should have sent one or two more official emails to our list of subscribers (don’t just send one!) and we should have spent more time on some good media/blog mentions. Personal conversations led to our best pledge day and we’d recommend spending time either talking in-person to people or on the phone or chat/Skype/etc. Our first four and our last four days were highly productive, likely due to the excitement of launching and wrapping up our campaign. It was the middle 20 days that were the the long-slog of working hard for every donation, and weekends were just tough in general. If you don’t already have several hundred friends and followers on twitter or facebook (including several who are quite influential themselves), you will have a harder time of effectively running a crowdfunding campaign, so build up your social profile and your respective personal brands, every chance you get, not just when you need to raise money. You may find, as we did, that you will receive donations through other means as well!

After all, people are making a contribution based somewhat on your project, but mostly upon their belief in you.

• Days without a pledge: 2
• Days over $25: 28
• Days over $50: 25
• Days over $100: 19
• Days over $250: 12
• Days over $500: 7
• Days over $1000: 4
• Best day amount: $2830
• Average pledge/day: $379.47

—

Further Reading

See our archive of tweets during our kickstarter campaign:
http://topsy.com/www.kickstarter.com/projects/jwilker/triumph67-0

Read more analysis of kickstarter projects:

http://pdnpulse.com/2010/10/tips-for-successful-fundraising-from-kickstarter.html

http://blog.kickstarter.com/post/1162195899/trends-in-pricing-and-duration

http://gigaom.com/2010/09/22/crowdfunding-kickstarter-has-some-advice/

http://coffeeandcelluloid.com/2010/03/01/behavior-patterns-of-kickstarter-funders/

http://coffeeandcelluloid.com/2010/03/04/how-to-figure-the-true-cost-of-a-kickstarter-project/

http://blog.kickstarter.com/post/5014573685/happy-birthday-kickstarter

http://blogs.indiewire.com/tedhope/archives/guest_post_jennifer_fox_part_4_how_my_reincarnation_broke_all_kickstarter_r/

http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/10000-successful-projects
(we are in the 5:01 segment of their successful projects video!)

Recently Wonder Russell compiled a list of articles from around the world relating to crowdfunding. This is a great resource, perhaps becoming the actual Crowdfunder’s Bible, (thanks, Wonder!) and it’ll be worth your while to peruse every story prior to launching your own campaign. Learn from those of us who’ve gone first and avoid the pitfalls and mistakes we’ve blundered through!
http://bellawonder.com/2011/07/11/the-crowdfunders-bible/

Please note: kickstarter could just as easily be replaced with indiegogo.com or rockethub.com or ulule.com. As of this writing, kickstarter just simply has the most street cred/reputation. Other sources of crowd or micro funding are: pledgie.com, flattr.com, paypal donations on your own site, etc.

If you found this information useful, please like and follow TRIUMPH67!

Relax. Keep in mind this is a total reboot of Final Cut Pro and you can still keep on using Final Cut Pro 7 side-by-side. Use the new one when you have free time or shorter projects, but rely on FCP 7 for your big jobs for now.

But back to our little dilemma… you read that FCPX supports native DSLR footage and XDCAM footage and this and that, but how the heck do you import your EX1 or EX3 clips into the project?! There is no apparent way to do so as importing the native files just produces a solid green clip (hardly useful, even for environmental projects) and there is no Log & Transfer anymore!

Here is the fix: There is no “native” XDCAM EX support (unlike native DSLR support) in the new FCPX — you still have to use Sony software to “wrap” your XDCAM files into a Quicktime file and then import your clips from there. And the new XDCAM Browser won’t do the trick, nor will the Clip Browser, no, you have to use something you may not have used before: XDCAM Transfer. If you think of XDCAM Transfer as your new Log & Transfer window, I guess it is about the same, it just feels wrong to have an “evolutionary” new video editor and need to switch out to an older third-party application for a codec that has been around for so long now.

Look at the 2011 MacBook Pro 17″ 2.30GHz with 8GB of RAM — it is damn near as fast as the Mac Pro 6-core tower with 24GB of RAM for Photoshop CS5:

http://www.barefeats.com/mbps06.html

Kick it up another couple of speed notches with the Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD and get over 500 MB/s read and write speeds, in a portable computer!

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_Extreme_Pro_6G/

Is the new iMac 27″ the very best bang for the buck on the market? It certainly looks that way for the indie or small business filmmaker. But I am confident a LOT of commercial photographers will choose this computer as well. Why would you want/need a more expensive MacPro (unless you had custom cards you needed to install for custom drives/video or we find out the screen isn’t up to snuff for some reason)? Heck, just look at what a 27″ Cinema Display costs on its own and the new iMac is one sweet machine.

http://www.apple.com/imac/

I just did a whirlwind video shoot in the Tuscany region of Italy and immediately knew it would be a DSLR shoot versus a large-camcorder shoot. I’d have to have all my gear in one bag and check my luggage and tripod.

My first instinct was to get the Kata HB207 backpack bag (love their stuff and their bright yellow interiors) but its dimensions exceeded most published measurements for airline carry-on bags. So I searched all the online sites and found very little that fit my desires of a backpack style and room for camera(s) and the new MacBook Pro 17″ laptop. Seriously, does everybody just get the 15″ laptop now? It would seem so from the available backpacks on the market. I would if I could, but I still need that ExpressCard slot for SxS cards.

In the end, nothing really excited me save for the ThinkTank bags and it seemed a done deal when I saw their StreetWalker HardDrive (SWHD) backpack bag — until I saw the tag claiming it was made for 15″ laptops. But it looked spacious in there, so I brought the 17″ MBP down to the local shop. And it fit just fine! (Hey, ThinkTank, you should update your site and bag tags so you don’t miss out on sales!)

The problem I had with the SWHD backpack was that once I had all my gear tightly arranged within, it couldn’t fit my laptop power supply or camera battery charger anywhere! Augh. So close! So, to my second choice, I went with the ThinkThank Airport TakeOff (ATO) rolling bag with backpack straps.

At just 2″ wider than the SWHD, the ATO worked perfectly. Having the wheels and telescoping handle made connecting flights a breeze and I didn’t even use the backpacks straps during my trip (which was OK because it was fairly heavy). The dividers are very customizable and come with plenty of pieces. A rain cover is included. The zippers feel quite durable. The internal zippers have covers when shut so as not to ding or scratch any of your gear. The only thing you need to do is get yourself a nice laptop sleeve as the external laptop pouch is not padded, but it does include a nice security cable. The ATO fits into all the overhead compartments just fine with Delta, AirFrance and Lufthansa. And it fit just fine into the back of the Fiat Panda, too. Go, Panda, Go!

In summary, ThinkTank bags are well-built, strong, spacious, and perform great when traveling. I highly recommend their gear.

Note: in terms of disclosure, the links in this post are affiliate links. You can also see these images with notes over on flickr.

I shot, edited and co-produced this narrative drama and had the pleasure of working with a fabulous and talented cast and crew, most of which had also never done a feature film yet delivered top-notch performances, services and assistance.

Check out the official trailer right here:

I got to fondle test the new Sony PMW-F3 digital video camera tonight at Z Systems and I won’t bore you with still photos of the device, mainly because you can look up a lot of them yourself (and the ones with me in them are NSFW — F3 is sooo sleeek, sooooo sexy!). The things I did want to bring to your attention, though, were the camera’s very impressive low-light/high-gain performance and the juicy tidbits I got from Sony’s presentation.

Oh, go ahead, take a quick peek at the video clip. It isn’t very scientific, just me getting a few seconds at 0db, 6db and 18db of gain. On the Sony reference monitors, the image was super clean. So clean, in fact, that I had to double-check that the gain was indeed turned on and was set to 18db! We were all collectively impressed. I can see a tiny bit more noise now in FCP, but still, at 18db, the image is pretty nice! Certainly leaps and bounds better than the noise from using gain on the EX3 camera.

The juicy bits are as follows (via Sony):

• The firmware update for 4:4:4 / SLog in April 2011 will cost money (updated: about $3300)
• It should be capable of f16 / ISO 1600
• 13 stops of latitude
• Footage does not need any de-Bayer
• It can do 1920x1080/60 4:2:2 via HD-SDI output
• It will do 1920x1080/30 4:4:4 via dual HD-SDI output
• Records both HD-SDI and SxS (if cards present)
• It supports Cooke and Arri PL mounts
• The Bp-U30 battery won’t work, larger ones will
• It has five 1/4″ mounts on the top
• Sturdy handle and sturdy mounting plate on bottom

Thanks to Z Systems and the Sony guys for bringing the working camera to Minnesota. As they mentioned, it is two cameras in one — you can use it immediately as a Super35-sized EX3 SxS camera, and you can also use it as an HD-SDI output Super35 pro camera.

Also, I was unable to glean any good information about the supposed NXCAM HD camera, but I am curious…

Confused about the magnification and sensor size? See AbelCine’s Sensor Comparison Chart, too.

Note: the three Sony Prime lenses (35mm, 50mm, 85mm) look to cost almost $6000, which, if they hold up to the standards of other PL primes, is a pretty nice price.