Sony PXW-X70 Professional Hand Held Camcorder,4K

This camera exceeds my expectations!PICTUREThe images this camera generates are fantastic. The dynamic range is rich and accurate and it's got plenty of HD formats to choose from.HANDLINGVery nice feel with well thought buttons.SIZEThis is a BIG camera in a very SMALL body, just like Shawn Johnson, the strength of a football player packed in a tiny body. Very easy to carry around. It's just heavy enough to achieve a good balance in my hand.ZOOMGood, not awesome.CODECI haven't had any trouble. Once you download Sony Catalyst Browser it gets pretty easy.LOW LIGHTGreat. Subtle grain starts showing at 18 DB...not too shabby.AUDIOAwesome. 2 XLR's, plenty of controls, excellent built-in mic.4KPurchase and installation can be a little bit challenging but once done (15 min.) It works great!FEATURESLots of features, my favorites are the Picture Profile variety, Histogram on the screen, XLR inputs, Built-in ND filters, HDMI out, just to mention some.PICTURE STABILITYExcellent near to awesome.AUTO FOCUSMedium fast but very good. Extremely accurate.MANUAL FOCUSVery slow, you need to turn the ring MANY times to be able to focus on anything.Overall, a very powerful little camera.I do recommend it!

I had great results with this camera, until today. I bought the camera in January 2015 then upgraded to 4K when that became possible. I didn't take the 4K seriously but some clients demand it. I was pleased this morning to find out that the 3.0 update was available and it included a 100Mbps 4K bit rate. I downloaded the update from the US Sony ServicesPlus site - several times. It would not open on my computer. The links on Creative Cow also showed the UK and Canada download sites. I downloaded the update from the UK site, it opened without a problem. Following the instructions closely, external power, etc., it aborted a couple of times. I then restarted my computer, did a fresh download from the UK site and tried again. It appeared to work. There was a progress bar that was advancing. I left it to update. When I returned about 30 minutes later the camera was dead and there was an abort notice on the computer. The camera is really dead, will not power up on battery or external power. And guess what, the reset function is in the menu. You can't access it if the camera is dead. I had a long talk with Sony service the result of which is that I had to send the camera in. Interestingly, just now I went back to the US ServicePlus site, a tedious login was required - that was not the case this morning. The update now downloads and opens without a problem, if only I had a camera to update.

Great quality for the price.You can make very large high quality files with this camera.The Ziess lens is great and gives a really crisp image.You can get up to about 18 dB until you notice noise.Very compact.

This is a great little camcorder and the quality is astounding. The only thing that prevents me from giving it 5 stars are the controls. They are laid out in a very unergonomic way and it's awkward to get to them. The menu button is directly under the LCD foldout screen so when it's open it's very tough to get to it. White balance involves clicking a button on the outside, then having to go into the menu to set the value. Dumb! The manual, as are most Sony manuals in my experience, less than fruitful when looking for detailed information on functions. You can find custom picture profile settings on the Internet to enhance the ones that are provided. It's a sturdy piece of hardware and takes great video. It's upgradeable to 4K which is a huge plus for the near future.

My overall opinion on the camera itself is rather favorable. I've had the X70 for about a week now and took it for several days of shooting in the Sierra Foothills. The fit and feel of the camera is nice, feels solid and well constructed (except for the zoom rocker which could be a bit better sealed against dust and moisture).The dual XLR audio inputs are what really make this a step up from the AX100, more of a pro camera with line, mic and phantom options. If you want to output video beyond the 50Mbps, you also have an HD-SDI (especially useful for broadcasting or sending to an external recorder). And Sony has included the colored peaking for fast and accurate focusing (as found in some of the camera's bigger cousins like the PMW-350).BUT let me tell you why you should wait to buy this camera. Sony has labeled this fine piece of technology as XAVC. What they don't tell you (unless you call ProSony) is that it is not XAVC-intra like the F-5 and F-55, which happen to be supported by all the big editing programs. No, friends and neighbors, this is XAVC-long GOP, and nothing can read this codec.By nothing, I mean FCPX with the XAVC plug-in cannot. Edius cannot. Sony's own Vegas Pro 13 cannot. I'm not sure about Premiere Pro. Aftermarket transcoders cannot (of the three free ones I've tried).Sony Creative Software folks say the new Catalyst Prepare will be able to read and transcode, but that software is not yet available. Catalyst Browse, however, will transcode XAVC-L to ProRes but only one file at a time (no batch projects) which is a huge issue if you've just shot 119 clips over your weekend in the Sierra Foothills. In fact, I am writing this review as I manually transcode every file.That said, if you don't mind shooting video on any of the X70's lesser formats like AVCHD, you'll be okay.Does this product launch fall into the dismal failure category? Yes. The PXW-X70 camera is well worth your consideration for its performance in its price range, just not until Sony finishes developing everything needed for it to work.Once all these bugs are worked out, I'll have no problem bumping this review up to 4 or 5 stars.