If your filmmaking's evolving for the better, I'm really happy for you, and I think if one
can find a small Z7 for the same price as a Z1, then they've got a bargain -- but the/
our S270E is fraught with fundamental issues -- technical and design.
It isn't a bad-looking camera with some gubbins stuck on it, but...
- Eye cushions haven't been made yet to fit the large eyepiece.
- The servo is fitted too close to the end of the lens. The design on the Zeiss (in most
cases) requires an extension (we paid £50/$90) to fit a matte box.
- It feels cheap.
- The 'rolling bars'/office lighting/CMOS chip issue occurs near flourescent tube and
black lights, and not all of them oscillate and buzz at the same frequency. The brown
bars on monitor screens is an easy fix, of course, by dailing in the corresponding
frequency into the camera. Sony's phonecall professing the interference to be a 'feature
of the camera' was as farcical as it was patronising.
- Even though 'progessive' is stamped all over the camera, it's not progessive! The
image is that silly pseudo-progressive 'look' which breaks apart and requires deinterlacing
as soon as one applies effects, particularly speed duration and/or camera flash effects.
On the plus side the bundled Zeiss has been dumped, the little Z7 is still a cute
replacement for the Z1, and I'm sure properly lit uncompressed HDV tapped out via HD/SDI
(and then up-rez'd to 1080p via an AJA box for example) will look reasonable good.
It's got some nice/novelty features buried in the menu, but for our low end stuff,
I wished we'd saved some more money now and bought an HVX300 or one of the new 422 XDCAMs.
Darren.
youtube.com/darrenpce
