About
The FX3 is the smallest camera in Sony’s full frame cinema line. It is built off the core of the Sony A7slll, but whereas the A7slll is a still camera that is biased towards video, one could say that the FX3 is a cinema camera that can take photos if it has to. The FX3 does not have a viewfinder and this makes the body a little bit smaller than an A7slll but the addition of a cooling fan makes it a little bit thicker. The record button falls easily to hand, and it’s surrounded by a zoom lever if you are using one of Sony’s powered zoom lenses. The next obvious difference is the top handle. It slots into the camera’s “smart” hotshoe and then is screwed directly to the frame. The hotshoe passes power from the camera through the handle, and the handle has professional audio inputs which send their signals through the handle/hotshoe into the camera. We have augmented the handle with an attachment from Tilta. It extends the rear of the handle, turns the top into a NATO rail with mounting holes, and places a replacement hotshoe and holes at the top front of the audio unit for mounting accessories (generally a monitor). We’ve also added a half-cage to the camera. It not only adds protection, but it has a built-in ARCA Swiss dovetail plate that lets it slide onto DJI gimbals with no need for attaching a plate.
The camera records internally to high quality 10bit codecs or you can take a RAW signal out its full size HDMI port and record RAW to an external recorder. Sony’s S-Log3 and Cinetone looks are options, and it can also apply LUTs to your footage. It does true 24 frame DCI, and it can apply anamorphic de-squeeze to your footage. It has the ability to record timecode, and we supply a Mutiny USB adaptor for that purpose which also allows 3pin Fischer start/stop. We recently added a little more storage, the camera comes with two 512GB CFexpress Type A cards. Unlike SD cards, these cards allow you to access all of the high frame rates the camera is capable of, and they offload at up to 800mbps. We haven’t had great success with Sony’s card readers believe it or not, so we conducted our own tests and settled on a ProGrade card reader that is more reliable. It comes with both USB-C and USB-A cables. You can power the camera off the 100 watt USB-C power adapter. We’ve always sent the camera out with five NP-100 batteries, but we recently added a charger from Tilta that holds 4 batteries and charges them over a single USB-C port using the AC adapter that is already in the kit. Once they are charged, you can put a lid on the charger and use it as a storage case inside the kit (the fifth battery rides inside the camera). Talk to us if you need to get timecode into the FX3, we have a number of third party options.
What Comes with it?
- Sony FX3 Camera Body
- Half-Cage with integral ARCA Swiss Dovetail
- Audio Handle w/Accessory Mounting Plate/Extension
- Two 512GB CFexpress Type A Memory Cards
- ProGrade USB-C/A Card Reader
- Five Batteries w/Tilta Quad Charger
- 100 Watt USB-C Power Supply
- False Battery to Dtap Cable
Price
| Day | $225 |
| Weekend | $225 |
| Week | $675 |