The F55 records internal — there are a couple
of slots on the camera head — 4K (not RAW) to SxS cards, along with varieties of HD and 2K. The onboard AXS-R5 records onto AXSM memory cards at various data rates (depending mostly on frame rate). They are a monster 512 Gig but there is a warning! Even these behemoths of the card world will only last about half an hour at 60 fps in 4K RAW. If you want 4K RAW you better bring some storage! We download to mirrored drives in the field. We tend to view straight off the camera onto the Sony 17" OLED monitor for a technical review before download. After download we play RAW files off the drives using the Sony “RAW Viewer” software on the Macbook Pro’s — the picture is never as good as it was off the camera but it’s quite viewable and will play of the laptop without juddering at 1K rez. Back in Bristol at the office the Digital Imaging Technicians (DIT) put the rushes through the Yo Yotta system to create an edit proxy (HD 115). They are editing in HD on AVID media composer version 7 (which has all the F55 support). The Yo Yotta system is also the archiver. They archive using a LTO 5/6 system — LTO is a tape archive system that is generally regarded as more stable than hard drives. Neatly everything is backed up through the Yo Yotta system and there’s a direct link between our archive and edit proxies. At the end of the edit the Edit Decision List (EDL) for the final cut goes back into the Yo Yotta system and it then manages the high res pull from the archive. Once that is finished the original files (RAW and 4K video) go onto the Baselight for the final grade. The Yo Yotta system, at the center of what they do in DIT, is a super bit of work, and a real credit to all that put it together at Yo Yotta. The Sony F55 is the type of camera the industry wanted. Sony asked and then listened to what people said. In every generation Sony has come up with a camera that has become a cultural icon. In the 90’s it was Digital Betacam’s DVW-700. In the 00’s it was HDCAM’s HDW-900R. Now, admittedly after several years in the dark, we have a very likely candidate in the PMW-F55. Time will tell but it is looking pretty good.
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