Sony FX30 Long-Term Review - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly.

welcome to the channel folks my name is Shane in today's video I'm going to share with you 10 things you need to know about the Sony fx30 mirrorless camera if you're thinking about buying it now I purchased this camera almost a year ago so consider this my long-term review I'll timestamp everything down below if you want to skip ahead back or forth but overall this particular camera has been a pleasure to use and if you find this video helpful leave a thumbs up subscribe all that kind of crap let's get into it before we get into this list I'm also going to talk about why I purchased this camera so as a Sony fx3 owner I was looking for all the same form factor and design but in a cheaper body alternative and that's where the Sony fx30 made sense so I bought this as a b camera to the Sony fx3 so I can remember where all the buttons are if I'm working in front of the camera like this I can literally use both in exactly the same way so for me having the same form factor is really important but I did want to go ahead and spend the huge bucks again on a Sony fx3 because no matter where you live in the world whether you're buying them new or used they're super expensive at the end end of the video I'm going to talk about how I feel about this camera up against the Sony fx3 so stay tuned one of the things I love about the Sony fx3 is its image quality and this comes down to the fact you're getting a very similar color science to the Sony fx3 now a lot of people give Sony a hard time when it comes to skin tones and color science I think this camera is great if you're shooting an S tone it's one of the most Bland looking profiles for most shooting situations it doesn't do your skin any favors and you get that green sickly look but if you're shooting in the no picture profile which is the default one you get this kind of image quality the skin tones look good there's nice vibrancy in the sky you don't need to shoot in SL log 2 or three to get the most out of this camera you can simply turn it on hit record and get great results and I'm shooting at 4K 25 frames per second now this camera shoots all the way up to 4K at 120 frames per second and HD up to 300 frames per second but if you're like me and you're happy just shooting in 4k most of the time this camera will give you really great results just know there's no open gate mode so if you want to shoot vertically it's a little more challenging shooting with a 16x9 aspect ratio unless you're happy flipping the camera sideways so just keep that in mind whether I'm in the studio or out in the field shooting a video like this I'm extremely satisfied with the 4K image quality coming out of this camera and if you don't need to shoot in resolutions above that or in open gate this makes for a really great choice the Sony fx30 is loaded with so many great codecs and recording options so if you want to shoot 4208 bit if you're in the studio you can and those files are much smaller than 42210 bit you can also shoot all entro if you're happy consuming your media card in only a few minutes so yeah just keep that in mind depending on your media card of course and there's also the high efficiency video codecs which are my personal favorite so I'm shooting with the HC codec right now this is 42010 bit so we're getting more information than 8bit which works great outdoors it also records at 50 frames per second and then I can slow this down on the timeline if I need to but the files are so much smaller than all of the other options but you're still getting high quality video now when you're shooting 420 10bit on this camera it really makes the editing experience a whole lot easier if you're shooting 42210 bit in these high efficiency video codecs older computers can struggle but I love this feature in this camera there's a codec that will suit everybody so it's jamed Pack full of the right options now if you can't tell I live somewhere where it can get extremely hot I might be sweating big time right now but it can get over 40° C where I live I also travel to a lot of hot and humid temperature environments overseas as well so I wanted a camera that never overheated and the Sony fx30 much like the Sony fx3 has that great active cooling system that keeps the camera cool and operational you know one of the biggest problems I have with YouTubers who are in that Sony Fanboy Echo chamber is they justify cameras that overheat in a matter of moments outside on an average day so for where I live having a camera that overheats on a 20° C day isn't going to do me any favors I even on a day like today where it's going to get up to 31° C so it's going to be really hot it's almost at the peak temperature I'm not going to have an issue with this camera so if you're like me and you live or you travel somewhere where it's extremely hot get a Sony fx30 or fx3 the active cooling fans really work well one of the things that's made my life easier over the last couple of years is having great autofocus especially for efficiency it means I can plunk the camera down on a tripod walk into the frame walk out of the frame whatever the case may be and it's just going to work and I have to worry far less about the Sony autofocus system than a lot of other cameras on the market so this is great it means I can just do this talk to the camera and have it work another way in which the Sony autofocus also excels is the tap to focus which means you can either track an object or pull Focus between two separate points and set up the speed and sensitivity so you can get a nice smooth Focus pull that suits your particular style of shooting so it's very flexible in terms of its autofocus but but it's not perfect there's times where the autofocus does take a little bit longer to either catch me in the frame or it can lose me if I'm a little bit too far back and I've tested this with so many different lenses occasionally I've been talking to someone like this in the shot and it's lost me to the background it doesn't happen all of the time but it's definitely worth mentioning but I would give this autofocus system a solid 8.5 out of 10 let's talk about the snq option built into this camera this is the slow and quick menu option we're going to talk about the 4K 100 or 20 frames per second now the great thing about this particular mode is on a day like today or even an overcast day if you're shooting Outdoors you can get some excellent results as you can see from these samples on screen the image quality looks fantastic and none of this was shot in SL log 3 it's just a no picture profile and if you pair it with a fast lens you're going to get excellent results now if you shoot at 24 frames per second I would just recommend shooting at 60 frames per second in snq you can slow that down about 40% and get some really great results but if you do need to use that super slow 4K 120 frames per second then I would recommend just using it either in a really well lit room you sort of have to ramp your lights up a little bit or outside on a day like today and the results look great and I don't think anyone will complain with the end result but it can look a little bit noisy and the reason why is not only when you're shooting at 4K 120 frames per second we get that massive crop but it also ramps up your shutter speed which in turn ramps up your ISO and the low light performance on this camera isn't great so you notice that in particular when you're shooting at 4K 120 frames second indoors but Outdoors like this I could shoot with it all day and it's going to look great if you're wondering how big the crop is this is how it looks normally and this is the crop shooting at 4K at 100 or 120 frames per second as you can see it's punched in quite a lot all right I've just changed lenses we're now over to the 55 mm f1.8 Sony Zeiss fullframe lens this particular lens the 55 mm Zeiss is my favorite fullframe pairing for Sony fx3 and A7 S3 but it also works great on the this Sony fx30 again though you just have to do that 1.5 times cropped so if you're using a 35 mm fullframe lens on an apsc body it's just over a 50 mm equivalent and this 55 you got to times that by 1.5 and that will give you the focal range that I'm in right now so this is somewhere around if I had to guess it would be somewhere around 80 I don't know exactly I've never really done the calculations but it should be around that focal length But the lens lineup for the Sony e- Mount is fantastic whether we're talking about fullframe or APS see all right up next I want to talk about the difference between the Sony fx3 and fx30 when it comes to getting the background blur and subject separation look that a lot of folks are after so if you want the best in background blur and subject separation fullframe is the way to go it makes getting that a whole lot easier even at a distance what I found with the Sony fx30 is I have to be a bit closer to the camera and lens to get the same or similar depth of field look now this is the Sony Zeiss 55 mm f1.8 Prime so this is giving me a much tighter focal length than it would on full frame but I can achieve a really shallow depth of field depending on where I stand if I get in nice and close like this you can see just how much background blur I'm getting but it's definitely not as easy to achieve because I need to be further back from the camera and all those kind of factors so just keep that in mind and again if you're comparing Apples to Apples the fullframe look will still give you more shallow depth of field but all of that said I think you can still achieve a really professional look out of this camera shooting with some of the Full FR prime lenses it looks great to my eye and if you don't need to blow the background out to the nth degree all of the time and this looks like enough to you then you're going to be very happy with this camera I would have no problems using this and I've had no problems using this out in the field instead of shooting full frame and no one has once complained so again you can get great results out of this just pair it with the fastest lens possible let's talk about the ergonomics on the fx30 now I'm holding the fx3 in my hand here with this little vrox lens which is an absolute Beauty one of the first things that I love about this particular camera body is the grip the grip is what sold me on the fx3 other than the image quality of course the grip is just great if you got larger hands like I do I can p a basketball this particular camera feels awesome I don't feel like my fingers are slipping off the grip or anything so I'm a big fan secondly the joystick is on the top now this will take a little while to get used to it's right here most cameras have it on the back now if you're coming from an A7 S3 for example or any other mirrorless camera then you'll be so used to using the joystick on the back this will take you a little while to get used to but it's not a deal breaker and you'll climatize to it if you're someone who's just going to be plunking this on a tripod no big deal right you'll get used to it that way but yeah it does take a little bit of getting used to now third up I love the fact we get a red record button on the front and on the top so if you're in a shooting situation like this I can hit the record button on the front of the camera without having to reach onto the top this is just a really handy tool it's something that I can appreciate the thing that I missed the most on this camera after shooting with the Panasonic S5 Mark II and X all week is an evf it was so bright earlier I found myself bringing it up to my eye to shoot or to look at I should say with an evf that is non-existent so there's no electronic viewfinder anywhere on this camera again not a deal breaker and when I'm in the studio I don't even miss the evf but when I'm out in the field and it's bright and I want to double check my settings or review some footage an evf is really important that all said though the flippy screen on the Sony fx30 is slightly brighter at least to my eye than the fx3 so it looks great I don't think there's too many compromises when it comes to ergonomics all right let's talk about some of the things I don't love about the Sony fx30 and much like the fx3 the Ia system leaves a lot to be desired anytime I'm doing handheld work and I don't want to run all of my footage through Sony Catalyst brows which down samples your 10 bit files to 8bit I'm taking my Panasonic S5 Mark I my gh5 Mark I or any micro 4/3 camera for that matter will give me way better stabilization than the Sony fx30 or fx3 for that matter they're both on par with each other now that said if you're doing static shots where you're just basically holding the camera like this the active mode is pretty good but the Ia system in Sony cameras is nowhere near as good as other solutions from Olympus Canon Panasonic whoever right so don't buy this camera for its stabilization but I think all of the positives F outweigh the negatives but I just wanted to put this in because if you're buying this for vlogging I would much rather buy a Panasonic G9 Mark I the Ibis in that camera is insane it's almost approaching GoPro levels whereas the ivis in this camera she ain't great secondly if you plan on shooting a lot in low light then I would highly recommend going for the Sony fx3 I showcased this on my comparison video between the fx3 and fx30 and the fx3 does perform way better it's not surprising given the Dual native ISO of the fx3 is much higher on the high end than it is on the Sony fx30 but that said if you pair this with a fast lens in most shooting scenarios you might not need to ramp the iso up past about 3,200 in those situations you're going to get really clean results and I found it's been fine in most shooting scenarios unless I'm doing a comparison in a really low lit room against a full-frame camera but there are some noise compromises when it does come to the fx30 once you start ramping up the iso because the second native ISO is extremely low when you're comparing it up against the fullframe camera but is it workable absolutely or of course you can just turn on a light all right let's talk a little bit more about the color profiles built into the Sony fx30 now we get all the log shooting options of course as we mentioned earlier if you want to expose with C EI you can do all of that stuff but you don't need to and I'm using the no picture profile I absolutely love the look of this in combination with the auto wi balancing of this camera you get really natural results I would put this right in line with the Panasonic S5 Mark II or X and the natural pit profile which is my favorite on that camera system so this is right up there the white balancing tool works great you can position the box wherever you want if you're doing it manually or you can let the camera do the work and it does a really great job at nailing the overall look again this is so much more pleasing to my eye than S tone which I think is completely overrated if you like to look like you've got jaundice or some sort of other medical condition s tone is great actually you should shoot as tone or if you want to you can shoot on like an overcast day and get great results but out here on a day like today it won't look anywhere near as good as this and I'll show you right now and now you're looking at s cin tone this is the picture profile all the Sony fan boys will say oh you've got to buy this camera for Sone really does this actually look better than the no picture profile I don't think it does it looks a little bit on the Bland side now if you want to do some sort of post- production to make it look a bit more vibrant you might as well just be shooting in one of the other picture profiles I don't like this it's okay but it's not great but if you're shooting a short film basically and you want to get a sort of Sinny look it can work for that but for outdoor stuff like this I much prefer the vibrant look let's wrap this video up if you've enjoyed the video so far please leave a thumbs up put a lot of work into these videos thank you so much there's going to be way more content coming up in 2024 so don't forget to subscribe so is this camera a game changer like every new camera release clickbait thumbnail no but what it is is extremely reliable if you need great autofocus great color science and active cooling which keeps the camera cool and operational outside on even an overcast day this is the camera to buy now if you're not happy buying a crop sensor camera then save up and buy a fullframe camera that's all up to you but if you already have a fullframe camera and you're looking to get a great B camera or even an a camera the fx30 is a really great choice I've used this so often outside on my channel just because it's got great autofocus great color science and active cooling overheating shouldn't even be a conversation if people are saying yeah buy this camera it's great but you need to buy a secondary fan for it or you can't shoot outside on a hot summer's day then don't buy it it's useless if you're going to be in that type of scenario this is where I can highly recommend the Sony fx30 I love the high efficiency video codex means I can get great image quality throw it into the computer and it's nice and easy to edit at least on my old Intel 27 in iMac so your mileage may vary there but there's a codec for everybody and if you want to shoot an all ey you can do that as I mentioned earlier but I love this camera I think it's great minus the fact I know now that the ibus isn't great and if I run my footage through Catalyst brows it's basically down sampling that back to 8bit if you do buy the full version of catalyst brows that's obviously not an issue but I don't want to buy that I'm a tight ass so I'd rather just buy the camera and be done with it so this is why I have other cameras for different shooting situations but as a run and Gun tool like this I think the Sony fx30 is extremely great value or if you're going to be in a studio doing YouTube for example you can't go too far wrong with this it will save you a fortune over buying the fx3 at not that much of an expense in terms of image quality if you know what you're doing thanks again for watching my name is Shane I will catch you soon see you

Channel: Geeky Nerdy Techy

Views: 8,337

Keywords:

Id: vJzFCqsbxNQ

Length: 16min 6sec (966 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2023