If you absolutely must be the very best influencer in your niche, you probably want to cast your eyes over the Sony FR7. The Japanese company bills it as a world first and it’s actually aimed at the cinema industry. But, given its feature set, it could work well with a small team of content creators.
That’s because it offers users “…remote pan/tilt/zoom control, high flexibility in zoom capability and wide-angle shooting” in a single unit. You’ll have to pay for this, of course. About R170,000 is the barrier to entry. That’s an awful lot of sponsored videos, and you don’t even get a lens with it. That’ll cost extra.
Feel the influence of the FR7
Still, it’s worth considering. The Sony FR7 can be mounted on basically anything. Crane, dolly, tripod, vehicles, ceilings — all of these are options. You could probably whack it onto a drone if you had the hardware. But it’s the camera’s capabilities that really impress.
It’s ‘only’ rocking a 10.3MP sensor and caps out at 4K video recording (at 120fps). It’s got an ISO range of up to 409,600 and a stop range of 15+. That’s unusual in a pan-tilt-zoom camera, the way Sony explains it. It supports Sony’s S-Log3 gamma, wide S-Gamut3, and S-Gamut3 Cine colour spaces for post-production but it also offers preset scene profiles that cut down on work after shooting.
Sony’s eye-tracking tech, suitably ramped up, lives inside the FR7. An electronic variable ND filter is resident, as are dual card slots supporting CFexpress Type A and SDXC memory cards.
Sony’s FR7 can be monitored from multiple locations at once. More than 100 camera presets can be selected and swapped between via a phone or tablet app. There’s also a hardware remote controller, but you can add almost R50,000 to the price if you want one of those. The Sony FR7 is probably enough on its own unless you have a Hollywood budget, yeah?
If you want one, expect to pay at least R169,000 for the FR7 on its own when it launches later this year. The FR7K, a bundle that also includes Sony’s SELP28135G lens, will set you back at least R212,000. Hey, nobody said that being the best influencer in your industry was cheap.