My name is Luke Jackson-Clark, and I am a travel adventure photographer and filmmaker from London, UK. Over the last 5 years I have travelled to over 50 different countries sharing their cultures, landscapes, and people through imagery. I started photography over 10 years ago and have transitioned into videography more predominantly over the last few years. Sony’s line up of professional cinema cameras have been the perfect tools to help me do this.

The film is the cinematic culmination of a month of travel with my brother Thomas. He left for university this year and before he left, we wanted to spend some quality time together. I always wanted to film the experience and tell some form of story, but it wasn't until I started to edit the footage that I decided to make it as a send-off message to him. My initial plan was to document our experience and tell it in a ‘cinematic documentary’ type format, but the emotions hit, and it took a turn. I like to think that the best ideas and stories come from a last-minute change that just ‘feels right’. When creating don’t let your set plan get in the way of the right story.

First impressions shooting on the Sony FX3

I can’t begin to describe how much I love this camera. Taking photos and filming while being on the road can feel a little overwhelming but there is so much this camera offers that makes the process super easy. Here are a few of my favourite features:

• The concept of forgetting to press record is not a problem with the tally lights and the big red record button on the top of the camera (say goodbye to checking if there is a little red dot on the screen).
• As a travel filmmaker I don’t have the luxury of set lighting and have to work with what the environment throws at me. Having two base ISOs of 800 and 12800 gives me tonnes of flexibility and lets me keep shooting till way past sunset (as you can see in the fire scenes)
• Being able to import conversion or creative LUTs is a godsend. Being a photographer first, colour is super important to me. So being able to see how the image looks while being in camera is reassuring for my future self when it comes to the colour grade.
• Talking about colours… the image that this sensor puts out is out of this world. I don’t want to use anything else. With the 10-bit colour depth post processing was actually super enjoyable.
• One more positive is the active cooling that the fan and vents provide. It’s always nice not having to worry about how long I’m shooting even on a hot summer's day.

The lens that got the most action was probably the Sony FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM. Having the flexibility to go from wide (for scale) to zoom (for details and compression) without switching lenses is super handy while on the road. I also had the FE 16-35mm f/2.8 GM for any vlog footage and the FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS for very specific focused moments like you can see at the end of the film in San Francisco with the sun, birds and golden gate bridge.

When Thomas and I got to the beach for the midsection of the film the sunset was a lot quicker than expected so it was also nice to have the FE 35mm f/1.4 GM in the bag to help with the low light. Most of that scene was shot at f/1.4 and there wasn’t one second where the camera struggled to find focus!

The Colour Grade

One of my favourite parts of the process when it comes to travel films is the colour grading. So, I thought I might share some before and afters from the internal S-Log 3 footage to the finished grade you can see in the film.

The Sony ECM-M1

I had this mic super glued to the FX3 for the whole month on the road. I find real audio really elevates the story, helping the viewer feel even more immersed. The quality of the new ECM-M1 mic is brilliant and has an incredibly functional design. Since I was switching quite regularly between vlog moments and cinematic video, the dial on the back letting me quickly change to 8 different pick-up patterns within an instant was super intuitive. Not only that but I had my camera on a pretty small gimbal for most of the trip, so having the mic so small and weigh so little really helped. A small powerhouse!

Some final thoughts and tips

Overall, my experience with this camera, as you can tell, has been brilliant. There’s no wonder it’s now being used as the main camera on big budget Hollywood movies. If I had to leave you with some things to keep in mind. I’d say, try your best to keep to the cameras native ISO’s of 800 and 12,800 - this will help you keep the image super clean and have the most success when it comes to dynamic range.