By Mitch Goldman
The PXW-X180 is the latest in the long line of Sony’s 3-chip, 1/3 inch ENG cameras, picking up where the Z7u and the NX5u left off. While the demand for larger sensors in recent years might seem to have made cameras like these obsolete, Sony has built enough next-gen features into the X180 to make this format—a veteran of countless hours of reality TV, live events and corporate videos—meaningful in entirely new ways.
Remarkably, the X180 can connect via Wi-Fi as well as 4G/LTE. This opens the door to a whole new world of live media. With the X180 you have the capability of transferring files directly out of the camera and even live streaming right out of the camera in real time. I’ve worked on many major live TV events. Even this year I worked on a show where we would shoot rehearsals and then run the card to an editor who would compress the clips in an Avid and upload them for review: not exactly instantaneous. With the X180, recorded video files can be transferred from the camcorder to a smartphone or tablet in MP4 format. With the X180, everyone on set as well as the clients and sponsors back at the office can have “Video Village” in their pockets. Now that is a powerful media tool.
And that’s just one application in a very traditional broadcast environment. When you consider what can be done with a camera with these capabilities in our see-it-now, social-media-saturated culture, your head will start to spin: live music webcasts; retail promotions with live, online contests; destination weddings that allow the folks back home to participate… Did I mention the X180’s near-field communication that allows you to control camera settings remotely using your smart phone as well as its GPS metadata? Yeah, that too.
The X180 has also progressed from those previous cameras in some othersignificant ways. Simply in terms of image quality, the X180 is a screamer. Unlike its predecessors, the X180 has a full 1920×1080 raster which means there is no interpolation of pixels. This difference might not be immediately noticeable to the naked eye but interpolation was a big disadvantage when you started compositing after a green screen shoot. It could leave you with digital artifacts and aliasing. The X180 will give you a full, accurate image perfectly suitable to this type of work.
Along with this full raster is vastly improved compression. You’ve got a 10-bit 4:2:2 image which, if that sounds like techy gobbledygook, means that your image has a wealth of data supporting it. Color rendition in skin tones is lovely; detail in shadows and highlights is robust. And you can take that clip into post and move that image around– color correct, add filters, bring out the clouds in a scene or change the mood—and that image will hold up quite nicely. That’s something that could not be donenearly as well with previous generations of this type of camera.
You have to realize that means that you are collecting a tremendous amount of data. With the XAVC codec at its maximum capture settings, you will get about a minute of video per gig on your cards. Fortunately, with the X180 you can also choose to record MPEG2 or AVCHD or even DV, all of which consume less data and allow your cards to keep working longer.
This flexibility is going to be a huge benefit when you go to post. With all the different edit systems in use right now, when you ask your editor what file format she wants and you give it to her straight out of the camera? You’ll be a rock star. Additionally, you can simultaneously record proxy files with hours and hours fitting on a single SD card.
Like its predecessors, the X180 has the manual controls that professional shooters look for in a camera: you can control iris, focus, shutter, white balance with a manual interface that looks quite similar to the ones that Sony installs in its high-end Cinealta line. But one appealing thing about this camera for many shooters is that it’s also easy to allow much of this work to be done by the camera automatically. In most conditions auto mode is quite effective. So even if you don’t have a ton of technical know-how or your only available second shooter is a noob,if they have a good eye and they know how to be in the right place at the right time they can make terrific-looking video. That’s quite a feat for Sony.
The X180 is also loaded with additional features that I haven’t even mentioned: like 3G-SDI which can be a tremendous benefit for multi-cam shooting; there’s a variable ND filter (why did no one make one of those before?!); there’s also a vastly improved OLED viewfinder which is a big help for finding critical focus.
The 3-chip, 1/3-inch ENG camera is still a powerful tool and is still meaningful in today’s media environment. With the X180’s new features, Sony has adapted it quite nicely for today’s workflows.
