Cadillac spot shot on Sony NEX 5N pocket camera with PL adapter.

Adam Frisch FSF · October 21, 2013

Below is a little test commercial I shot for a director friend of mine at El Mirage dry lake bed. Our budget was non-existent, so we used my little Sony NEX 5N with a PL adapter (can be found on Ebay) and a set of Zeiss Standards T2.1's to save some cash. Film was professionally graded by a post house. Shutter was set to about 1/100th to mimic a 90 degree shutter feel. Worked very well, although I had to make a bracket and rod for the remote focus motor to attach to, so my AC could pull remotely. It gets a little fidgety with HDMI's and all the rest of it coming out of such a small camera, but it can be done.

I've had my NEX 5 for almost 2 years and I'm still blown away by how good it does video, considering it's so tiny. That big APS-C chip really delivers. Everything is controllable and pretty easy to get to and it takes stellar imagery. I've used it with my PL adapter as a C-camera/B-roll on many commercials, and the footage from it gets cut in right alongside Red and Alexa footage. Nobody can tell the difference. I do however protect my highlights religiously, use a Tiffen Ultra Con 3 (to bring contrast down even further) and have all detail and the onboard contrast settings set to minimum. The only thing I can fault it for is what it shares with every other stills camera out there: rolling shutter. For everyday stuff it's not noticeable, but for any action stuff or fast paced stuff, it gets visible. You can see it on the car shots in this film. There are ways to minimise it, but it can not be eliminated. Can't wait for all cameras to have global shutter.

David Mullen ASC · October 21, 2013

Looks great!

I like my NEX 6 but just had to send it in for repair under warranty because for some reason the lenses started going haywire -- I think the electrical connections between the lens and the body are acting up, my zoom would randomly zoom in and out, the exposure would go nuts, and every now and then the camera said it didn't recognize the lens, even though it was a Sony E-mount lens. First I thought it was the zoom but then my primes started acting up to, so now I think it's the connection.

Did you see that Sony is now making a full-frame 35mm version of the NEX cameras?

http://www.dpreview.com/news/2013/10/16/first-impressions-review-of-the-full-frame-sony-a7-and-a7r?utm_campaign=internal-link&utm_source=news-list&utm_medium=text&ref=title_0_17

I got my Sony NEX 6 last spring because I wanted a small camera with a decent-sized sensor to take on my vacation to the U.K. rather than carry around my DSLR. I had a nice Olympus Pen E-PL3 last year that I loved for that sort of stuff, but the M4/3 sensor just wasn't great in low light levels. The Sony APS-C sensor seems much better in terms of dynamic range and noise, though I prefer the body design of the Olympus and its mechanics. But picture quality trumps everything else. Here's one of my photos from my U.K. trip:

Adam Frisch FSF · October 21, 2013

Nice one, David.

Yeah, I was going to get a NEX 6 as an upgrade (as you know, it has better controls and a built in eyepiece), but when I saw that the Alpha 7 and 7R are coming out in Dec, I'm going to wait for those! Looks like they will be killer. The wider film lenses will probably not cover the full image sensor, but that's OK - I can zoom in a little for those shots.

Adam Frisch FSF · December 19, 2013

A little update. I Just got the brand new Alpha 7 with the full-size chip. I love the camera. I've now played with my old Lomo sphericals from the 60's with a PL adapter on it and the 22mm, 28mm, 35mm give a visible vignetting. The 50mm is almost passable - it vignettes slightly, but not on an overly obvious way. The 75mm and the 135mm don't vignette at all. So when shooting video one can either crop into an APS size on the camera for the wider lenses, and then pop back to fullsize caption for the lenses that cover the whole chip. You don't lose any resolution by doing so, it's all 1080P.

Sadly, I dropped my NEX 5 into a snowy crevasse on the last job in the Slovenian Alps, never to be found again. I loved that little camera, so might get a NEX 6 as well just to have as a smaller point and shoot and to use as a directors viewfinder.