Sony FX2 Review

The FX3 gave run and gun shooters a cinema camera without a viewfinder, on the theory that video people live on the rear screen. The FX2 disagrees. It is the first Cinema Line body with a built in electronic viewfinder, a 3.68 million dot panel that tilts from flat to ninety degrees, and that one change makes it a camera you can actually raise to your eye in daylight. Underneath sits a 33 megapixel back illuminated sensor rather than the FX3's 12, so this is the rare cinema tool that also takes a real photograph.

The video story is strong without being boundary pushing. Dual base ISO at 800 and 4000 keeps noise honest in the dark, S-Log3 holds fifteen stops and change, and internal recording runs to 4:2:2 10-bit All-Intra including DCI 4K. Full frame 4K comes oversampled from close to 7K and looks it, but the ceiling is that 4K is the ceiling, with 60p only in a Super 35 crop and no 6K or 8K on offer. For most owners that is a shrug rather than a wound.

What you are really buying is Sony's autofocus, the same subject aware tracking from the Alpha bodies, in a shape built for gimbals and cages, at 2,699 dollars body only. Against the pricier FX3 it gives up nothing that matters to a solo shooter and hands back a viewfinder and forty extra megapixels. It is the most sensible camera in the Cinema Line, which is a quiet sort of compliment.