With the FX9, Sony have added a dual native ISO, giving you a choice between circuits
tuned to ISO 800 and ISO 4000, giving you a lot more flexibility with your ISO settings
than you may be used to if your coming from cameras like the FS7. The FS7’s base ISO
was 2000, so in CineEI mode that is what your camera was set to, and 2000 is a bit of a
halfway house ISO. Too bright for daylight filming, and not quite enough for low light
filming. With the FX9 you can now freely choose between 800 for situations when you have lots
of light, daylight exteriors and so on, or 4000 for those times when you need great high
low light performance and great dynamic range. I always give the example here of a firelight
scene like a campfire. You have very bright flames and lots of information in the shadows
at the same time, so you need the dynamic range benefits that come from being at a native
ISO.
So because of this addition of the dual native ISO, the FX9’s high ISO performance was
one of the first things we wanted to try out when we got the chance to actual use the camera
for a few days. We did our usual test for high ISO performance, we set up a lighting
situation and then try and keep the exposure exactly the same as we go up through the ISO
range of the camera. We do this by adjusting the shutter speed because it is the exposure
setting which will affect the noise levels the least while giving us the fine control
we need to get our exposures to match. By doing this, we can look at the dark parts
of the image to see what the noise levels are like in the dark shadows or in an underexposed
image, and in her face and the chart for comparing noise levels when correctly exposed.
So
lets look at the two native ISO’s side by side, and you can see straight away that they
are both pretty clean. The 4000 is definitely slightly noiser, but it still looks great.
If we compare it here to 6400 with the low base ISO you can see the difference that having
a dual native ISO makes. Applying gain to get ISO 800 up to 6400 adds a lot of noise,
as you would expect. By having this second higher base ISO to swap to it means we can
basically reset that noise at 4000, so 6400 looks significantly cleaner using the higher
ISO, and we can actually get up to 12800 and still be slightly cleaner than 6400 with the
lower native ISO. There is definitely a reason so many manufacturers are now implementing
dual native ISO’s like this as it does make a big difference to high ISO performance.
Overall I think the FX9 does a great job here. This dual native ISO is going to make a big
difference to customers used to the FS7 mk II. But what do you think? Let us know in
the comments section below, and if you want to buy a Sony FX9 for your own work head over
to Proav.co.uk with the links in the description below. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see
you in the next one.