(soft jazz music)
- This is a big package!
You guys already know what's in here.
I figured since we unboxed
the C500 Mark II here,
this would be an appropriate location.
Now this is actually a kit.
So you know how you could buy a DSLR
with a body and a kit lens?
Well this is kinda like
the kit lens for the FX9.
Oh man, now this, this feels nice!
It's an F-4 28-135, has some
optical image stabilization,
full frame, came with this
little plastic cover I mean,
this isn't a lens cap, is it?
Comes with a lens case.
We got ourselves a strap,
this looks like our lens hood.
Let's go ahead an attach that.
Oh I see, okay that's
why they didn't give us
a lens cap 'cause they got
one of these covers, boom!
It definitely feels nice
and we have our zoom rocker
right there, you can go
between servo and manual
and also you can turn on and
off your optical steady shot.
But yeah, it's a nice
feeling lens for sure!
Now onto the camera.
Here she is, oh yeah!
Now we're talkin'!
Then of course, we have our eye piece,
so we got that attached.
We got our manual and some parts,
I'm assuming we'll figure out
what this is for eventually.
Our little battery charging setup.
Then we have our grip,
this looks very similar
to the one on the FS7.
So let's go ahead and attach
that, this is a rosette.
Finally, the battery.
Now this is just a
BP-U35, not a big battery
I don't imagine it's gonna
last very long on here so,
you definitely need some larger batteries.
We'll go ahead drop that in
there, unboxing complete!
♪ I'm driftin' on a fade so ♪
♪ I let my hair down ♪
♪ I'm leanin' on this diet coke ♪
♪ Rococo hand me down ♪
♪ I ain't pickin' it up ♪
♪ I got your call waiting ♪
♪ Can't seem to find time
waiting on the sunshine ♪
♪ I ain't pickin' it up ♪
♪ I got your call waiting ♪
- So those shots that you just saw
are completely uncolor graded
shots shot in S-Cinetone.
S-Cinetone was a color
profile from the Venice,
now we have it in here, so that is cool.
These shots were shot using
the full frame sensor in 60p
but in this current firmware,
that means we have to
drop it down to 1080p.
We will be able to shoot 60p in 4K
in that version 2.0 firmware update.
Firmware's gonna be a big
deal when it comes out
'cause it's really going
to up the capabilities.
I think it's also a 180 frames per second
and full HD's also gonna be
a setting that's possible.
I'm also excited to able
to navigate all this
through the touch screen
in version 2.0 as well.
I also kinda held it like this
where I had the handle down here
and I pinned it in between my arm,
'cause I do kinda like
that chest level shot
and it felt pretty stable.
I'm gonna get some shots in S
gamma three sinet in S-Log3,
let's see how that looks!
That should give us a little bit more
dynamic range to work with.
(upbeat music)
♪ I ain't pickin' it up ♪
♪ I got your call waiting ♪
♪ Can't seem to find time ♪
- I pretty much have this
camera on full auto right now,
'cause my focus is just to not crash,
so auto focus, exposure,
all that is on auto.
But what I'm really impressed about
is that usually when there's
a Variable ND like that,
it uses a polarizer filter
as one of the components
of the Variable ND.
And the issue with that
is if you're filming
polarized lights like
usually parts of the sky,
or a computer monitor, a
television, your phone screen.
It starts to affect a lot of that,
sometimes it makes it look
like the screen's turned off,
there'll be blobs that
are darker than the rest
and stuff like that.
But I haven't noticed any of those issues
even when I have this ND on.
- Are you Gene Nagata?
- Yeah man, what's goin' on?
- Dude, I can't believe
I'm seeing you right here.
I actually started my channel,
but I've always been like shy
to be in front of the camera.
- The first couple videos
are pretty touch to get over,
but then eventually you just start
to forget the camera's there.
At this point now, I look at the camera
and I just talk to it like it's a person.
- Yeah yeah, no.
- And it doesn't feel weird to me anymore.
It felt really weird for the first...
- Well it feels weird
starting out saying, hey guys,
when there's clearly no guys there.
- (laughs) Yeah.
- Dude that's is crazy, it's Potato Jet!
- [Gene] I need a test subject for this.
I'm gonna film you riding
off into the sunset,
to test the auto focus on this FX9.
Is he comin' back for you
or are you just walking home from here?
- I guess I'm walking home.
- (laughs) See ya!
So Sam's over exposed right now.
When you turn on the Variable ND
you obviously see that step in,
but then I can go and control
the density of that ND
without there being any step.
So because of that I can turn on Auto ND
and it looks nice and smooth.
So like I said, I have all
my settings on auto right now
so auto focus, auto
exposure, all that good stuff
and I wanna test out
how quickly everything
adjusts in this mode.
So let's start off with focus.
Sam, tire, background.
Tire, Sam.
A few more auto focus tests.
Face, handles, feet, tire.
Sam's face.
That's not bad, huh?
What's blowing my mind about this test
is that the exposure is auto
because I have the Variable ND on,
and also this lens has a servo mode
so I can control the zoom like this.
So I feel like I'm operating a camcorder
where everything's on auto.
The exposure's on auto, the focus is auto,
but it's like a camcorder that
looks really frickin' good!
I think this is a first pro video camera
where I would feel very
comfortable using the auto focus
as well as the auto
exposure with this ND auto.
Sam's never shot with this camera before,
but let's how long it takes
him to get comfortable.
Exposure and focus is on auto.
Whatcha think?
- Oh man, this so smooth!
- It's easy right?!
- Yeah, it's super easy.
- Yeah and the ND goes
from a quarter to 1/128
and that translates to about
two stops to seven stops.
So that's enough neutral
density for most scenarios.
It might still not be dense enough
if you're trying to shoot wide open
on a fast lens on a bright day,
but for how convenient it
is, it is awesome to have.
And I'm diggin' the
lens too, it's a 28-135.
I'm impressed with the
image quality, I really am.
We brought it with a small
battery fully charged,
but it didn't last long so,
definitely get those bigger batteries
or else you're gonna be swappin'
out batteries like crazy!
(smooth music)
It's not a replacement
for the FS7 but I feel
like a majority of people
that are gonna drop $9,000
for the FS7 Mark II,
they're gonna wanna spend the extra $2,000
to step it up to the FX9.
I mean yeah it is still
a $2,000 difference,
but at the same time you get
that 6K full frame sensor.
For those who don't
wanna shoot full frame,
you still have the option
to shoot super 35 in here.
So I dunno, Sam what would you do?
- I would buy that one for sure.
It was pretty solid.
- By the way, what do you guys
think of the Sam cam, huh?
And when he's back there
he gets to do a little bit of
the zoom in, zoom out action.
Gimme gimme some of that.
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah!
We're just experimentin',
trying something new.
- Like all the Sam you didn't ask for.
- (laughs) Dude, do you
guys want more Sam cam?
Or do you want us to just delete him
off the channel entirely?
- Yo, you could also do a Lefty cam.
- (laughs) Lefty cam?
- Lefty!
- You need a Lefty light too.
Anyways so let's stay focused.
I think what makes this
camera really appealing
is that it's professional grade,
but it's also pretty easy
to use as a solo operator.
I guess you could shoot on any camera
as a solo operator but
it definitely gets slower
and slower as the cameras get bigger,
and heavier, and bulkier.
This you can still comfortably shoot solo
and stay pretty nimble.
And it's not a lightweight camera,
but at the same time it's
not as heavy as it looks.
There's a pad here so you
can rest it on your shoulder.
So we got two knobs here
so we can adjust the angle
we want our handle,
and this one is to
telescope out the handle
so you get it to where it's
comfortable, lock that in.
And of course you can flip it up
and then it turns into a little monitor.
Other ways you can tuck this handle back,
get it up on something like an Easyrig,
you can get your creative low angle.
So there's a lot of flexibility here.
My favorite thing about the body
is that it feels really
nice in handheld mode.
My least favorite thing
is that because it's long,
it's a little bit trickier
to get it on certain gimbals.
If you compare it to
something like a C300 Mark II
that has a much shorter body,
it's a lot easier to balance
this on a majority of gimbals.
And for those of you who are used
to shooting on the Sony FS7,
you'll feel right at home.
I mean it's smaller, huh?
- It is indeed smaller, Gene.
- I think the biggest difference
is that it's shorter.
- Two inches shorter?
Three inches shorter?
- So from the lens mount
to the back of the camera,
it's right around eight and
a half inches on the FX9.
On the FS7 it's only eight inches.
It's only half an inch difference!
Sam said two inches, what an idiot!
But I want to say this is definitely
one of the most exciting cameras
for the price range it's in.
It's right around 11,000.
Back here we have our battery,
I threw in one of the larger batteries.
And then back here we
have our dual card slot
so we have two slots for XQD cards.
You can do double slot
recording or relay recording,
so do you wanna record at both cards
at the same time so you
have a redundant backup?
Or start from one and then
it overflows into the second?
So now it's time to boot it up!
There's the on switch right there.
And this definitely can
be intimidating at first
because you look at it and
like, that's so many buttons.
But once you start learning
where everything is,
you can start to navigate
it pretty quickly.
Actually a lot of these
buttons are user customizable
buttons that aren't even programed yet,
so they're kinda just open slots
for you to do whatever with.
And again if you're an FS7 shooter,
you're gonna hop into this
and feel right at home.
We have our low, medium, and high.
That's our gain or also our ISO
and you can preset what
each of those mean.
So right now my low is 320 ISO,
mid is 640 and high is 1250.
Depending on what shoot
you're about to go into,
you wanna customize those three.
And then what's nice is
that you can toggle
between them real fast.
Same with right next to
it is the white balance.
So you have your preset
down at the bottom.
So then I have mine dialed into 5600,
so daylight and then you have
two custom ones; A and B.
Now let's say I want A to be this room,
then I can press this right here
which is going to auto
execute our white balance.
But let's say we would change
the color of the lighting.
Oh, we're goin' nice and
warm right there all right!
So I'll make this my B preset,
hit that auto white and now
it is registered to 2600.
So once you get these programed in,
you can switch back and forth
between different rooms real fast.
Especially useful for
documentary film making.
Now let's talk about audio for a second.
We have our two XLR ports back here,
both with phantom power of course.
So that's cool and pretty standard,
but over here we have gain control
for four different channels.
This is something I'm excited about
because I'll probably set
channel one and channel two
to the XLR inputs right here,
but you could also attach a module up here
to get a third and fourth XLR input.
If I'm filming two people,
I like to have them
both wearing a lavalier
and a boom mic, so that's three channels.
And that's a pretty
common setup that I use
and any time I wanna do three channels
with a single camera,
I usually have to have an
audio recording device.
But having up to four controls
really opens some doors
on how many people I can lav up
and how many shotgun
mics I can have runnin'.
So I'm really happy to
see four channels on here.
Of course you always want a professional
audio recordist when you can,
but sometimes if you're in a pickle
and you need to record
a couple extra channels
you have that option on here, love that!
I am very curious about
the low light capabilities
so let me darken up this room
and here is the image at 12,800 ISO.
I did swap out the lens
for the Tamron 28-75 F2.8
so it's gonna give us
a little bit more light
than we were getting earlier.
But I'm sure if you use like an F1.4 lens,
it'll still look bright but
how's it lookin' at 12,800 ISO?
I still have a whole lotta
testing to do on this camera
but first impressions,
it's pretty awesome.
I wanna throw a question out to you guys.
What kind of video should I
make next with this camera?
Should it be like a deep dive
type of video on this camera?
Or should I compare it to maybe,
the C500 Mark II or maybe
compare it to the FS7?
Poll is right there.
Let me know and whichever one
gets the most amount of votes,
I will make that video.
Anyways, let's read some
comments about my last video
which was about the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro,
it's an 8K camera phone.
I set up a little Rube
Goldberg in my house,
literally I tore the entire
house apart to do this so,
I put a lot of effort into that video.
You should go check it out.
"Fun fact, this was one of the most
"expensive films ever shot
"due to the fact that
he used toilet paper."
"I cringed when I saw that
toilet paper rolling out,
"anyways I hope he recycled."
I definitely did, we took
all that toilet paper,
put it in a little baggie,
and we had all this crap toilet paper
that we were using for
the next week or so.
"Potato Jet says,
"I didn't use any third
party apps or anything.
"Also Potato Jet, uses
a $3,000 Edelkrone Jib."
Okay, that is true but the only reason
why I used that Jib is
because I had it already.
But if you're shooting on a phone,
you can really get away with
something much more basic
and still get that same effect.
But I swear camera moves are so important.
If you can get a nice smooth motion
like any camera will look 10 times better
than if it was shaky.
"After the haircut,
"he looks like the guy
from Shaolin Soccer."
You guys might have noticed
that when I started off
this video I had long hair
and by the end of it I had short hair.
Yay for continuity!
(soft upbeat music)
