How It All Went The football sequences were shot at night under the stadium lights, the volleyball sequences under indoor arena lighting, and the sand Jeep sequences under beautiful outdoor natural morning light. The F55 is a very intuitive camera to use for any shooter used to the balance, feel, and location of controls on a traditional mobile EFP/ENG camera system. The F55 is versatile too. It can also be used for cine-style setups. The Fujinon Cabrio zooms, with their powered servos (including rocker levers), filled our mobile EFP needs. We did a lot of shoulderheld shooting and found that both of the Cabrio zooms balanced really well on the F55, providing a natural feel and quick reframing and following of action via the powered servos. We rarely zoom during shot sequences, but the powered zooms gave us the capability of quickly re-framing between shots using the rocker levers on the servo units, then to simply hit the servo unit Record button for the next shot. In other words, we essentially use the zooms as variable primes. When we went to shooting by tripod, the Miller Arrow 55 head/HD CF legs combo gave us solid support and very smooth pans and tilts. The F55 provided the Super 35mm 4K (4096×2160) imaging capability we sought. We added in the Sony AXS-R5 recorder, sporting Sony AXSM memory cards, onto the rear of the camera. That enabled 16-bit 4K RAW at 60 fps, in S-Log2 and S-Gamut profiles, with the added bonus (along with an IDX brick on the back of the rig) of easily counterbalancing each of the Fujinon Cabrio zooms. The rig turned out to be in perfect balance for shoulder-held work. Highframe-rate shot sequences for slow-motion are a staple of mobile EFP-style shooting of sports, adventure travel, and wildlife, and the F55 delivered that quite nicely. That’s me tracking football action with the Cabrio 85-300 via the powered servo unit. The Fujinon remote handle servo wasn’t on the Arrow 55 tripod handle in this photo, but shortly thereafter I installed it on the handle. That gave record and zoom functions to my right hand and rack-focus function to my left hand — exactly the way I prefer to work while tracking fast-moving subjects while using a tripod.
D.P. Ben Braden’s take on the XAVC™ codec: “The XAVC codec is astonishingly clean. It’s free of noise and artifacts.”
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