Sony F65 at Rule Boston Camera Pub Night

Rule Boston Camera held it's second Pub Night of the month last night with an event dedicated to the Sony F65. Dhanendra Patel, Senior Product Manager, Beyond HD Production Solutions, Sony Electronics Inc., spoke about the technical features of the camera and showed a short video shot with the camera. They'd brought in the Sony 4K projector again (a big black box the size of a fridge that makes about three times as much noise) and I wish they had shown more than the one video; though they did show it twice, once with a director commentary.

The crowd wasn't as large as had turned up for the Canon C300 event, but then at about $100,000 once you add in the rotary shutter and the digital recorder, we are talking about a different class of customer.

I was just there for the beer and pizza.

For those of us used to DSLRs and NEX-FS100's, the F65 is huge, and quite heavy, though Rick Macomber, who slings around a huge ENG news camera all day, didn't think it was that heavy. Rule had a couple of Shape pre-production rigs intended for the F65, and at the end of the event they put the camera on the rig and Rick, Mike Sutton and even John Rule carried the camera around for a moment.

I'm not sure it's really a shoulder camera! It's shape - particularly the front - does remind me a bit of an old slide projector!

The camera comes standard with an electronic shutter, or you can get a rotary shutter (which is an add-on, and reduces rolling shutter.) I asked Dhanendra why someone would get it without the rotary shutter, and he said that of the approximately 200 already ordered, they had all been ordered with the rotary shutter!

The camera will ultimately support up to 120fps, but this isn't yet implemented; it will be available as a free software upgrade later in the year.

The camera began shipping four days ago, and they'll be shipping about forty cameras every ten days. Boston is lucky in that Rule is one of only three distributors for the F65 in the country. John Rule said that they intend to have one available for rental, and it will probably cost about $1,500 per day.

The following is a few seconds of video from the event:



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