Sony goes old-school on the shoulder
I thought the days were over a past relic of anther age, another time when Men were Men and cameras went on broad powerful shoulders.... These days camera design is purely for the physically feeble and wus-like. Small, hand-held, ultra portable. All the manly shoulder bearing grunt work removed for the indie video producer.
But there was sudden rush of nostalgic memory as I saw the first images of Sony's new HDV camera over-sized and built for a burly shoulder. I fondly remembered my youngyears sporting
Panasonic M5 and M7 cameras taking full size VHS tapes and proudly mounted on the shoulder. Seems the style is back as all fashions do.
The HD1000U seems a strange edition to Sony's extremely popular HDV camera lineup, moving as it does away from the ever sleeker chassis designs of the FX7, Z1, V1 and A1 cameras. Inside it seems to follow suit with the move to CMOS over CCD sensors nearly complete for Sony. Its a remarkably modest camera with basic features and certainly ot offering anything over the V1. So the question needs to be asked; who is the market for such a camera? Reportedly its wedding and event videographers but is there truly a desire amongst this fraternity for shoulder mounted image acquisition? Is this retro-design purely about catering to those camera operators who have to stand for long periods of time filming events?
I look forward to getting my hands on one for review, heaving it onto my shoulder with a suitably manly grunt and exhale and reliving my salad days...
Posted at 01:00AM Aug 31, 2007
by Mike Jones in video |
