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Hello, my name is Joe Caneen, the Video Whisperer, and today I'm going to do a review of the
Sony NEXEA50. And you're looking at me through the lens of the EA50 right now. What's unique
about this particular video camera are two things: One it's in the $4000 dollar range
and it's a full sensor video camera. Now I'll show that to you in a second, but in order
to do that, let's switch cameras. Well there it is, the Sony NEXEA50. This is a full featured
professional video camera and like in the review I did for the NX30, I'm not going to
go so much through the bells and whistles and technical specs. You can look that up
on the internet. What I'd rather do is show you what the camera can do in practice, in
application and let's talk about how easy it is to use or not and what type of cinematography,
videography it may be most suited for. One of the things I realised early on about this
camera; it's not a run and gun camera. That said everything I shot on this camera was
handheld, but my point is I'd much rather go around with my NX30 doing that type of
work. This camera is designed to be on a tripod. In a corporate shoot, controlled situation,
wedding shoot, a film or something like that, you have the option to switch prime lenses.
To change lenses you really need to be in a very clean environment. You don't want to
get dust specs on that sensor. There are all kinds of settings. You can go into the menus
and tweak things in on colour temperature, facial tone and all the rest of that sort
of stuff. It's just a little bit more fiddly and time consuming in terms of setting it
up to get the quality you want. So I would really call this a very...of course you can
tell by its size too...and another thing. It comes with this which is supposedly a shoulder
mount. Now I'm going to be less charitable than some of the other reviewers who commented
on that and tell you this shoulder mount is absolutely useless. It could not have been
designed by a cameraman. Of course the idea of a shoulder mounted camera is the centre
of gravity of the camera is over your shoulder, so there's very little weight on your hand.
As you can see, all this does is put the camera forward of your shoulder and you've got the
entire weight of the camera on your hand, so just keep that thing pushed in. It's not
really gunna...unless you want to look impressive, look like a news guy or something like that
and walk around like this. But (just kidding) that's useless. But the point is, this camera
wants to be put on a tripod. It wants you to go in there and set up all the settings
for the scene that you're shooting. So I can see using this in a corporate shoot or a film
shoot, like shooting a movie or something like that. And for that it performs great.
It's a $4000 camera, not a $15,000-$20,000 camera. What's good about the camera is its
full sized sensor and the depth of field you get therefore, and the ability to prime lenses
on it. I only had the zoom lens that came with it. I didn't have any adapters so I couldn't
put my Canon lens on it, but this is a 3.5, f3.5 lens. Now one of my Canon lenses is a
1.8. You put a 1.8 on this I'm pretty sure, and I wish I could show you, but I can't.
I'm pretty sure you would get the same depth of field you're accustomed to with DSLR shooting.
And that would be the strength of this camera. You can get the DSLR look but the full features
and the full audio capability of a video camera. Alright, I think it's time now to start showing
you some footage and what the camera can actually do. But first, a couple more points mention.
Number one, price correction: It's a $4000 camera. Here in the UK you can find them for
around £2700 I think at their lowest. Between £2700 and £2900 pounds. So under £3000
for a full sensor video camera. Point number 2: Media. I used a 32gb SD class 10 card in
there. Sony also makes an XC card to go into that slot. And those record a mirror. So basically
two copies of what you're shooting. And then if you turn the camera around, on the back
there you'll see it will take a flash memory unit as well. Sony sells those as an additional
accessory. You can set the camera up to record simultaneously to the SD card and the flash
drive or separately. Your choice. So if you use the Sony mirroring cards you'll have a
copy there. In fact, if you use that and the flash external drive you'll have 3 copies.
Two backups. Anyway, point is, there are all kinds of options on media and media management.
Third thing I wanted to mention was the menu access. There's a little scroll wheel on the
side there which I used for a while quite clumsily because it took a bit for my finger
to get traction on that knurled *** and I was inadvertently pressing it while trying
to turn it which would activate the wrong menu and had to back out of it and it was
a real pain in the butt. I didn't like that. But then, much to my chagrin, I discovered
later on top of the camera there's another way to access the memory which is a lot more
user friendly. You push the menu button there to get into the menu and then there are rocker
switches that will allow you to scroll up, down, sideways and a centre button you push
to select. That's the one to use. And finally, there is a viewfinder extension you can clamp
onto that thing which might be handy if you're using a tripod for shooting and also that
handheld configuration. At least it gives you a point you can press against your eye
to help with stability in handheld shots if you're going to use that shoulder pad thing.
Ok, so now to the footage. I'm seeing it myself for the first time today. I've strung together
a bunch of stuff to show you and, as I thought, the real strength of the camera is it's depth
of field, lack of, or it's shallow depth of field capabilities; it's DSLR-like look. And,
mind you, I was using an f3.5 zoom lens, not prime lens. So the first thing I'm going to
show you is a comparison I did between my Sony NX30, which I'm shooting with right now
and, uh, downstairs when I did first part of the video. I matched the image size on
the Sony NX30 and the EA50 and, there it is, as you can see, at f3.5 a fairly dramatic
difference in depth of field. Which tells me, when you start shooting with prime lenses
around f2, 2.8, f1.8 or 1.4 or whatever lenses you have to shoot with, you are going to get
that really nice soft out-of-focus background effect, particularly when you're shooting
close-ups and portrait shots and things like that.