There are 28 things an assistant is supposed to do to this camera before every take. In practice there are really about ten that absolutely need to be done every single time, but miss one and you’ve killed a shot… or maybe a series of shots on the same roll of film. In spite of this some of the greatest movies in history were shot on the Bell & Howell 2709 by cinematographers and their crews who knew the camera’s limitations and worked within them… and every once in a while found ways to push themselves a little further. In this sense the FS700 is equally capable: if you know what it can do and use it for what it’s good for, you’ll make some amazing images. The trick is know where you can’t cut corners.

First, before I finish the story, allow me to explain what S-Log is, and why its so darn significant. The Sony F3, a phenomenal 1080p HD camera already, records 8-bit 35mbps XDcam to SXS media cards. This is the standard recording media for all mid-range professional Sony cameras working right now. When Sony created the F35 camera a few years ago, they built a full Super 35mm sized CCD sensor capable of producing some of the best images in the digital cinematography world. This was a camera designed from the ground up to be a full cinema-style system that records to the highest quality footage to HDCAM SR tape (it also costs about $250,000). The standard XDCAM recording format would not cut the mustard with such a high end camera, the problem being that video systems in general are not able to capture the wide latitude of exposure that film can. Sony thought of a clever solution. They created S-Log.