Sony FX6 One-Year Review | My experience and why we bought two! 

im in school at full sail too i cant wait to get mine bruh

Wasting a lot of money there lol

Thank you for watching. Hope it was helpful, Cheers!

@@MaineMountainMedia it was time well spent

Thanks for the comment Cal! I think FCPX + SLOG 3 workflow might be coming soon. Thanks for the subscription!

Depends on what frame rate your shooting at.

@@shuggfilmzandstudio2354 You sure? There's no 4K Long GOP option in any frame rate.

@@skymakai I guess I need to check again. I just got it so I’m still getting used to it.

@@shuggfilmzandstudio2354 Yeah, all the 4K Long-GOP options are 8-bit.

Right? Shoot log and grade 8 bit?? Don't get it .....

Thanks for watching!

Great point, I am not happy with the CFexpress A card. We have been using SD for the past year and haven't encountered any issues for our usage. I'm sure some people would need to use CFexpress A and we found it really weird that only the largest data rates require CFexpress....but they only come in 80 or 160GB!? As to the XAVC-L to ProRes comparison, that's a totally fair criticism. It was actually very few cases when the the MXF files gave us trouble so it wasn't a huge sticking point for us. I should mention that it might just be a processing power issue. Our Intel 2019 iMac computers are not the top-shelf editing machines that we wish they were.

​@@MaineMountainMedia Sony and their media is long lasting issue with all their cameras. Cheaper XDCams are on SD cards, this Cine line has CFExpress A, FX9 has XQD. Z280 still uses 15 year old SxS. And yes CFExpress type A are horrible value for GB. XAVC is h.264 in disguise. Or h.265 depending on variant selected. H.265 is very hard to edit, PCs have advantage of beefy GPUs doing the heavy decoding. Apple A1 impressive as it may be is no match for dedicated card like RTX 3060. At least this is my theory why Macs don't like to edit these codecs.

This is a great question. I'll try to do a video about this soon because it's too much to type out, but the very short answer is you can probably get up and running for as little as $500 if you only shoot lower frame rates and don't want a fancy lens. The way I shoot, i generally carry about $2k in batteries/SD cards and $300 for a mic. It's the lenses that'll get you. I usually carry somewhere between $6,000-$10,000 worth of lenses depending on the project.

Yeah, it's great for some circumstances. Fireworks shows are a great example of a time when we want the explosion sound effects and the loud crowd cheers but we also want little soundbites in between.

@@MaineMountainMedia I must be missing a setting somewhere. Sorry, I just got my FX6. I have track 1 set to line one. Track 2 is off. Track 3 is also set to line one but when I change the db on track three it's also changing track one. What am I missing here? Appreciate the reply.

@@pedalandypedal The way I do it is plug my mic into Line 1 with the phyical switch set to mic +48v (for xlr shotgun) Then in the audio menu I set the source for track one and two are the same. Both CH1 and CH2 look like this: Source [Input 1 Mic+48v] Ref/ Sens. [-50db] Wind Filter [off] Audio input Levels (bottome left corner) [99] Then you can use the audio level gain dials on the side of the camera to adjust each channel from there. Set the switches to manual (obviously) and I usually set CH-1 to 4 and CH-2 to 7 *Remember this is only helpful if you will be editing your footage. This is a terrible setup if you hope to live stream or upload to a client directly. Also (this may be obvious but worth the reminder) be sure to be careful if you plug in a second audio source for an interview for example, REMEMBER to set CH2 back to INPUT 2 otherwise your boom/lav will not record into camera.

@@MaineMountainMedia much appreciated

I don't but I'd be interested if you find out!

What I was referring to was the fact that prior to having the electronic variable ND filter in the FX6, my only option was to use a polarizing VND. VND filters that screw onto the front of your lens are actually just two polarizing filters stacked on top of one another and as you rotate one of them, they react with each other allowing varying amounts of light through. They come with their own set of problems including color shifting, or creating strange artifacts in some circumstances. They can also reduce image quality in some cases as well. Of course there is the option of standard ND filters which can be swapped out (2stop, 4stop, 6stop, etc) but that is slow and impractical in most shooting environments for me. The EVND is a lovely feature that has the benefits of seamless exposure control without those potential problems. I hope that answers your question.

We ordered ours back in September 2021 and it arrived in April 2022. Be patient young padawan.

@@MaineMountainMedia nah I went with a Canon c70 instead

@@MaineMountainMedia by the time it becomes available again it’ll probably be ready for a mark ii version.

@@blimpo1232 Haha you're not wrong. It's been a real challenge to find these cameras in stock anywhere!

We use the Tilta Battery Plate for Sony FX6. It has a very satisfying lock, it's sturdy, and we haven't had any power issues. We also run a small battery in-camera so we can hot-swap the V-mount if necessary.

Thanks for the information!

Yeah great question! So it had to do with scrubbing and playback. It was not a major issue but one we did want to solve. It was importing without error most of the time (though it did fail a few times). But really it was the seamless playback that was lacking. It wasn't unworkable, but we found that converting to ProRes via Catalyst Prepare allowed for seamless scrub and playback with 4K 60p files and that helps our creation process move much faster.

The Ninja is a great monitor and if redundancy is a priority then it's absolutely the way to go. Depending on the project we have Ninjas or a Shinobis. It is basically the same monitor just no recorder and half the weight. The Ninja is surprisingly heavy.

@@MaineMountainMedia thanks a lot 🙏 i think it will be a shinobi! I think i can now internally record RAW after firmwareupdate 2.0 👍

Hey good question. We're believers in lens support in certain situations but we have on many occasions gone out using the 28-135 and no support under the lens. It's a personal choice, and many people disagree, but in my opinion the usability of a camera is more important than anything else. The functionality of the 28-135 makes it a great, medium sized camera with amazing run-and-gun capability. Maybe one day our lens mount will break, but for us it's about doing what it takes to get the job done. So in the end it'll be up to you and how much you value the longevity of your gear vs. the usability of the great. I can't say I recommend using heavy lenses without support, all I can say is that we do it very often, and haven't regretted it yet.

@@MaineMountainMedia ok ThankYou

Great question. We rarely use the sigma 18-35 but when we do, I'm always impressed. I'd say if your only EF mount lens is the 18-35, it's probably not worth buying the MC-11 adapter. But if you have any other ef mount lenses then it would probably be worth spending $175 for the MC-11 adapter and keeping the 18-35 lens around.

Our pick for on-body so far is the Deity S-Mic 2s. It's small, weather resistant, sounds great, and budget friendly. Our dialog mic for interviews is the Sennheiser MKH 8050 so maybe one day we'll upgrade to a matching Sennheiser for on-camera audio but so far the Deity has been performing great.

We have stayed away from E-mount becasue we know it's a slippery slope. We love this Xeen CF 50mm and manual focus is more common for us. Would love to try it out tho!

@@MaineMountainMedia I used to run the old Xeen series troughout the whole a7s m2 lifespan. But after getting my FX6 and trying native lenses, I switched without a glance. Now even the project when we can't afford a 1AC feels soo much more fun.

@@MaineMountainMedia why do you stay away from e mount lenses. Is it because Cine focused lenses or something else?

@@kapilesh14 It's just a financial decision. We already have a full lineup of Canon EF lenses and it would cost a lot of money to sell it all and switch to equivalent Sony E-Mount Lenses. We also dislike manually focusing with focus-by-wire lenses. Much prefer mechanical focus pulls. I'm sure over the years we'll pick up sony E lenses one by one.