Sony 50mm GM Lens & FX3 – Cromer Telescope
This week I wanted to do something a little more creative so I went out and did some filming with the Sony FX3 and the Sony 50mm 1.2 GM lens. I used to do a lot of these montage type videos and you’ll find some examples from over twelve years ago on this blog.
Sony 50mm 1.2 GM / Sony FX3 – Cromer Telescope
Pure Videography
I’ve always enjoyed shooting these short montage videos as they can be done with minimal planning and allow me to be creative in both shooting and editing. I see these short videos as pure videography and while many people now scoff at that word to me this it’s not a negative thing at all. Videography to me Capturing moments in time in the same way a photographer would and I’m proud to be a videographer as well as a filmmaker!
Sony 50mm 1.2 GM
This video was shot entirely with the Sony 50mm GM on the FX3, and it was an absolute dream to work with. Having the ability to shoot with an aperture of only f/1.2 can result in extremely narrow depth of field which provides lots of creative opportunities. The FX3’s autofocus system also allowed me to shoot some moving subjects that would have normally been impossible at such a small aperture.
The 50mm G Master lens is a real pleasure to operate, the focus is electronically controlled but manually focussing the lens still feels natural and not once did I feel disconnected from it. I really love the fact that this lens has a manual aperture ring as well. The aperture ring can be set to A (Auto) to enable control from the camera but I enjoyed setting it manually. I’ll certainly miss that when I change back to my other lenses.
On the right side of the lens is a switch that enables the aperture ring to be set to click or de-clicked which could be really useful if riding the aperture to control exposure. The aperture ring does move quite freely when not clicked so I preferred to leave this set to on as it stops the aperture ring being accidentally moved.
I’ve always enjoyed using a 50mm prime as walk around lens but this new Sony has really exceeded my expectations. Not only is the lens incredibly sharp, even at f1.2 but it also seems to maintain contrast in the most backlit situations.
Atomos Ninja V
I was also using the Atomos Ninja V recording in ProRes RAW which I’m now a huge fan of. When it came to offloading the clips from the SSD it was so fast, and once in FCPX the ProRes files were buttery smooth to work with.
One of the main benefits of ProRes Raw is the ability to change ISO and white balance in post and both are now supported in FCPX. I shot using S-log 3 and used the expose to the right (ETTR) technique meaning that most of my shots were over exposed but only to the point where the highlights would not be clipping.
Once in FCPX I used Leeming Lut Pro lut’s to quickly convert the footage back to rec709 and then tweaked the exposure using the ISO setting for the RAW files.
Let me know what you think of the results, and how you feel about this form of videography. You can also view the video at the top of this post on my YouTube channel
Kit used for the video
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Camera: Sony FX3
Lens: Sony 50mm GM
Cage: SmallRig 3278
Handle extension: SmallRig MD3490
4″ Rod: SmallRig 1871
Monitor mount: Nitze N54-F5
Recorder: Atomos Ninja V
ND: Polar pro PMVND II 2-5
