Sony Fx3 Review In 2024 : Is It The Right Camera For You?

what's up guys my name is Zach with Zack Chavis films and today's video is going to be about whether or not the Sony fx3 is the camera that's right for you in the year 2024 now I myself I've been using the fx3 for a little over a year and a half and I've had nothing but good experiences about it but I know this is an expensive camera and it might not be the camera that's perfect for everybody so this video is going to be whether or not it's right for you and some things to look for if you're thinking about purchasing it now just as a disclaimer I am not sponsored by anybody Sony my page is nowhere near big enough to even have have sponsors yet so this is solely from my experiences and just to help you before you make a big purchase or not so just for a little bit of context my main source of income comes from weddings so primarily I'm a wedding videographer but I also film Sports and I just actually started working with a production company to do more commercial work which is kind of why I invested in this camera in the first place so two years ago I was a Canon user I was using the Canon R6 and I actually started to film weddings because the Canon R6 had great video capabilities and as I started to film weddings I also started to notice a few weaknesses and things that I wanted to upgrade in the future one of them being overheating now the Canon R 6 was a great camera that shot in 60 frames per second at 4K but on a hot summer day it was guaranteed at some point to overheat which for my line of work doing weddings is not an ideal situation to be in weddings aren't necessarily something that you get a second crack at and you don't want to have in the back of your mind whether or not your camera is going to overheat so a lot of times if I did have an outdoor wedding I'd have to to either shoot in 1080P or I just have to keep star and stopping my camera which again is not ideal another limiting factor of the Canon R6 was that it had a 30 minute record limit which I mean I probably could work around um during the ceremony for the longer ones it might not be ideal of course especially if I'm putting it on a tripod um but again this is just a limiting factor and it was a great camera for the price but these things if you don't want to run into those problems or have that in the back of your mind um this is where you start to consider upgrading to a different camera so when I was shopping for cameras my first decision or my first route was to stay with Canon and look at some of the cameras that they had available um especially some of their high-end Cinema cameras like the Canon C70 and the Canon r5c both great cameras but of course just like anybody else you go on YouTube you start looking at different reviews and I stumbled across a video shot on the Sony fx3 a short film by a filmmaker by the name of Danny gvertz and um he's actually a very good film maker very influential behind some of the work that I do um I actually refer to a lot of the education that I need on this camera amongst other things in his videos I suggest that you check him out if you get the chance if you're new to film making if you are an experienced filmmaker um there's something for everybody to learn on his channel very genuine I love his teaching style but again I came across one of his videos um and I was blown away with the color science the um dynamic range that I was seeing the highlights and the shadows and what he was able to keep um of course I ended up looking at more reviews and this camera the size the fact that it has a fan in it the biggest thing that I saw that caught my eye or caught my attention was the Dual native ISO um I had never heard of this before um of course Canon cameras have this too but not to the extent that this camera did this camera has a dual native ISO now if you don't know what a dual native ISO is it's the two ISO levels or ranges that the camera is the picture quality is the best at so for the Sony fx3 800 would be the lowend and the highend is 12,800 which was incredible and extremely useful for what I do be it that weddings aren't always in the best light especially when it comes to the reception um so I started to get all these things that could benefit me and as hard as it was to switch ecosystems I didn't let that stop me from getting the camera that I I thought was perfect for my situation now again another key point with this camera that I uh kind of mentioned before is the fact that it has a fan inside so those issues that I was running into with the Canon R6 uh overheating didn't exist with this camera I didn't have to worry about it and I could shoot for as long as I could with the battery that I had in it and the card space that I had available so if you are a wedding filmmaker that shoots a lot of weddings Outdoors you live in a area that gets hot in the summertime um this camera probably will take care of all those ailments or any of those concerns that you might be having with your camera now um so I definitely think with those things that I just just mentioned alone with the Dual native ISO the fan um and the dynamic range and capability of this camera that alone to me is worth its weai and go another thing that I like about this camera is the fact that it is very compact it's one of the smallest cameras that I've ever had and ever owned um but yet one of the most capable cameras that I've ever owned um now when it comes to cinematography um you know you'll learn the further into this you get that weight isn't necessarily A Bad Thing especially if you start to shoot a handheld which I am starting to lean towards uh as of late but when you want to put this on a gimbal which on a wedding day you will most likely end up doing at some point it's not that much of a hassle and it's not too hard on your arms when you're working for 10 to 12 hours um you know it's really light especially when you have the camera on the Gimbal and maybe just the mic on top and a monitor on the side it's not that much weight um and when you're traveling it's easy to put in your bag it's easy bre easy to break down so again another benefit to me um but if you do want to add a little bit of weight to this there are so much there's so much customization that you can add to this camera of course you get a cage you can add a top handle an external battery um and other things that just add more weight to it to get rid of those micro Jitters which is a term that you will use or will hear a lot when it comes to cinematography um that's possible to get rid of when you add and rig out your camera so that's why this this camera was worth it for me and why I think it was a great choice I've already made my money back probably within the first two months of owning this camera I had consistent work from weddings and helping other um wedding videographers so um it was very very uh very easy choice for me to pick and a lot of times other wedding videographers in my area know that I have this camera and they know the iso capabilities they know the fact that it has no record limit they know that it has a fan on it um and they will call me just for that situation so not that that's why you should buy a camera up so other people can call on you to do these things but it is a benefit you know um so that's why it worked for me now a reason why the uh fx3 might not be the camera for you I think the biggest thing might be the price point it is very pricey right now brand new I think it comes in at a little less than 4 grand about $3,800 um not everybody has the money to pay for that or make that big of a purchase and that's totally understandable mind you guys it took me a while to get to this point where I am now where I could afford a camera like that um so if you're at the beginner level where you might not have that much of a budget there is an alternative option a little bit less a little less expensive um it's the fx30 Which packs in a lot of the same features that this camera has almost The Identical camera the Dual native ISO on the higher end isn't as High um I don't know the number off hand give me one second so I just looked it up the Dual native ISO for the fx30 is 800 the same as the fx3 but on the higher end the the uh dual native ISO or the native ISO on the higher end is 2500 so not as high as the fx3 um it is a crop sensor which will also change how your image is and also change what lenses you choose to use for that camera but other than that the image the dynamic range the picture quality is pretty much the same given that the lighting conditions are ideal but I think it's about half the price maybe even less than that especially if you think about buying a Ed from a website like KH um so that is also an alternative option for that camera another reason that this camera might not be for you and this is a bit nitpicky but if you are looking for a camera with built-in ND filters it doesn't have that um other cameras that do have that on Sony's end is the fx6 which I also do have um on Canon's in this Canon C70 would be the person the camera that you''ll be looking into um but I mean if you can afford a camera with builtin built-in ND filters then you probably can afford this camera too so just something going to be aware of if that's something that was on your mind the alternative to fix for this of course would to would be to buy ND filters which are uh filters that you screw on to the front of your lens that help you um change the exposure by twisting the end of that um that filter so very handy of course when you're in changing light you're going in and Outdoors you want to stay at the same aperture but you don't want to um lose any of that picture quality so um again just another bit of information before you purchase this camera camera now if I can find any other negative thing about this camera and it's really hard to is that um the battery life isn't that good um One battery if you're shooting at 4K 60 or 4K 120 it might not last you more than an hour especially on a wedding day when you're keeping your camera on consistently um but that's never an issue for me because I'm always using external batteries which is a good idea as a cinematographer if you are shooting weddings if you're shooting on Commercial F or uh on a set um you're shooting commercial work it's probably a good idea to have an external battery that your camera can run power from so that you can consistently work for longer periods of time um so again I've heard people say that the battery life isn't good but that's not an issue if you have an external battery um paired with your camera again guys I hope that you like this review maybe you're not really considering fx3 maybe you just saw this video by accident hopefully I added some input and value to what you already had um you know again this camera has served me very well um I'm very satisfied with it and I am looking forward to to continue to learn more about this camera there's so much customization that you can um have with this camera and the buttons um you know quickly switching back between the native isos um quickly switching back between modes of what frame rate you're shooting in um and so on and so forth but this camera is very very uh compatible with most of the jobs that I do now I mentioned that I also have the fx6 which I just purchased and I'll talk more in detail about that in the future what it's for whether or not I use it for weddings if it's Overkill um but yeah right now fx3 pretty much is in my bag for whatever I do whether it be a wedding um Sports football basketball and uh commercial jobs that I'm starting to get now so guys this is a lot of info um but take with it what you will and if you are considering buying the fx3 look at this if there's any other information that I you know skimmed over I'm sure I did I just kind of wanted to hit the key points but feel free to put your input in the comments I'd love to hear it and in the next video I'm going to explain how I use the fx3 for weddings my setup the lenses I use um and other things whether I use a gimbal or handheld at different times of the day so that'll be for the next video but for now guys I hope you enjoyed and we'll see you on the next one

Channel: Zack Chavis

Views: 4,139

Keywords: Sony, Sonyfx3, Videography, Camera Gear

Id: U3SKVt1PD24

Length: 11min 14sec (674 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 18 2024