Mike's girlfriend, Mel, agreed to be our super-model/willing victim. After whipping out Mike's Arri tungsten Fresnel and using the ceiling as a bounce source we set up the camera with his 35mm Zeiss ZF.2 and a Novoflex E-mout to F-mount adapter.
You'll have to excuse the long loading time of the pictures below. I wanted to show high quality screen shots so you can see what little difference exists between the internal and external recorder. The only place I noticed a difference was in Mel's sweater. You can see more detail in the Ninja capture than the AVCHD capture...however, the difference is very subtle. You will likely only be able to pick up a difference if you view the pictures in full resolution. Please keep in mind that this is a very ad hoc test and other scenes, such as nature, may have a more profound difference (or not). The FS-700 is back in the shop this week, but if it becomes available again I plan to do more testing in more complex situations.
What the external recorder does give you is better chroma key capabilities (simply because of 4:2:0 versus 4:2:2 capture) and better ability to push color grading (less compression in the Ninja)- again two things I intend to test if the camera becomes available again. What I really want to test are these two codecs against the 4k raw output that's supposed to be released in April!
During this simple test I noticed one other issue with purple fringing around highlights. After some searching on Google I found out that the FS-100 and Canon C300 have reports of a similar issue. Most people relate it to the design of the micro lens on the sensor and what happens when you overload the pixel's photo site. So it appears that nothing can be done externally besides making sure that absolutely nothing in your frame is overexposed and causing a single pixel to be saturated. This isn't a good sign for run and gun productions, like weddings or documentaries. However, does this mean that the camera is necessarily "bad"? In my opinion, no. It's just like the warts on ALL video products from $100 to $100k. You know the limitations and you work around them. Obviously lots of people are producing beautiful work on the FS-700.
As usual, if you want to check out the demo camera this month call the guys at the shop. If you have additional questions, Sal, Mike, or Len will be glad to help.
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