When you shoot with a camera for the first time, you usually want to take it easy and get a feel for the camera slowly. That is not the way that Mike Gray operates. For his first time shooting with the Sony FX3, he wanted to go deeper and test how far he could push the camera.

“I hadn’t really seen anyone push it to its limits”, explains Mike, “I wanted to see how the camera would perform in various situations. I have previously shot with the Sony Alpha 7S III and wanted to test out the abilities of the Sony FX3. It has the same low-light capabilities because of the amazing dual native ISO, with the higher one being ISO 12,800. It means I go into any low light situation confident that I will get a clean, noise-free image.”

There were clear scenes that Mike had in mind to shoot, but even with the location decided, there was still a lot of research and preparation, including trying to find something that resembled an astronaut suit. “Trying to find that suit was a nightmare! With Hollywood on our doorstep, you would think that sourcing a costume like that would be easy, but it was hard work to track down.” says Mike.

The costume would be worn in a scene that would be Mike’s favourite in the video.

“We shot the scene in these tunnels and caves near Death Valley, about a two-hour drive from Las Vegas. Getting to the location was an issue due to road closures. We ended up having to drive off-road to reach the caves. It took much longer than expected, and we were against the clock as the light reached the tunnels at a certain time.”

The hardship was worth it, as the tunnel sequence looks incredible. Mike recalls the excitement he experienced when arriving and he starting shooting; ”There was this adrenaline and craziness,” remembers Mike. “We finally got there, and this amazing light was coming into the cave; all these dust and sand particles were floating around, creating amazing light rays in the tunnels. With the autofocus in the Sony FX3, I could use the tracking mode to select the subject to focus on and never had to worry about the dust particles or light shifting the focus. The location allowed me to showcase the low-light quality of the 4K, 12-million-pixel full frame sensor.”

Most of the video was shot with two lenses, the FE 35mm f/1.4 GM, which is one of Mike’s favourite lenses, and the other lens, the FE 16-35mm f/2.8 GM. “The wide-angle zoom is great for travelling and travel vlogs and everything like that. It was a great kind of bundle of lenses we used for the project”, says Mike.

Then there was the idea of mounting the FX3 onto a drone. “I had a friend, Joel, an FPV drone pilot who lives in Los Angeles, so I called him to see if he could help out”, says Mike. ‘Helping out’ meant flying the FX3 following a dune buggy in the desert and a 4×4 around Los Angeles. Mike then used the gyroscopic data from the camera in Sony Catalyst Browser to stabilise the footage in post-production.

“We had to make sure we had the widest field of view we could get”, says Mike “and the widest I had with me was the FE 14mm f/1.8 GM. Shooting at f/1.8 meant I could shoot all the scenes in low-light and not have to worry about image quality.”

Overall, Mike was impressed with the performance of the Sony FX3, not just the image quality it can produce but also the build and handling.

“Every small detail allows me to have a more seamless workflow while filming. It’s designed with shooting video in mind, so things such as the tally lights are game changers – they reassure me that I am definitely recording, which is great when we have to shoot something run-and-gun style quickly.”

“Then there are all the different mounting points on the camera. We were able to rig all sorts of magic arms to the Sony FX3, and you can be very creative without needing a cage for it. It meant I could mount it at unique angles and capture different perspectives.”