Review of the Sony PXW-Z200 (and Sony HXR-NX800) Pro Camcorder
This is my first product review for Creative COW. For those of you who are not familiar with my reviews from my previous media outlets, I have been writing for Streaming Media Producer, Studio Daily / Studio Monthly, Event DV, and a couple others over the last 25 years. I do not treat review units I get in as museum pieces, I take them out into the real production (or simulated) world to see how they do. I report the good and the bad. If there are problems I will let you, and the manufacturer, know.
While I only had hands on with the PXW-Z200 ($4000), the Sony HXR-NX800 ($3300) is basically the same exact camcorder without the SDI out, timecode in / out, and the ability to upgrade to some future codecs. The other 95% of the features and specs are exactly the same, despite the very different model number. Since I didn’t have the opportunity, to use any of the aforementioned features, this review could be considered for both.
This is the first new Sony camcorder I have tried in over about 15 years. I own the HCR-FX1, HVR-Z7u and HVR-S270u (which I had a part in the design of). The design of the Z200 is an evolution from the earlier hand held models. The thing that stands out most visually is the camcorders LCD viewfinder. Unlike the previous models that fold on top of the tip handle, this one moves to the side of the handle. What makes this LCD different is that it has a removable sunscreen that folds out to keep the screen visible in the sun. At first I thought it would be flimsy, but it is surprisingly strong, and protects the screen when folded. The regular viewfinder is on the back, the battery well is below. The media slots are on the left of the battery. There are two SDXC / CFexpress Type-A slots.
Around the corner on the left are most of the controls. You have the channels 1 and 2 audio level controls, and switches for manual or auto mode. There is a small door that goes around the Channel 1 and 2 audio level knobs and allows you to see the position of the auto and manual level controls. You can move the level controls with it closed, but you need to open it for the switches. Below that is the power switch.
Next over you have the auto/manual. While you almost never want to use the “full auto,” in emergencies where you are rushing to a location and need to take it out and shoot, with out set up time. I found in tests, that it dose a pretty good job. Below that there are 2 rows of buttons. The three in the left column are S&Q (special high frame rates), network, and nightshot. The two on the right are audio set and display. Network and audio set, are actually shortcuts to menu items of the same name. Between this and the touch screen it allows you to make quick changes in the audio set up, instead of going through 3 levels of menus. This is helpful if you need to make quick adjustments. One of my pet peeves in today’s camera is that while they have 4 audio channels available, there’s no easy way to switch between monitoring channels 1 and 2, and 3 and 4. Sony makes it easy with the “audio set” button and two taps on the screen.
Forward of that, you have a row for the “auto iris,” and “ND (neutral density) auto,” with the ND on off switch in between. Below on a raised section, there is an iris adjustment wheel, ND preset up / down button and a variable ND wheel. Bellow them are ISO / Gain, white balance, and shutter, that when pressed, can be adjusted with joystick on the top handle or next to the thumb record trigger. Below that is the white balance set, button, its neighbor if the standard white balance “A, B, Preset” switch. Last is the gain, “low, medium, high” switch. On the lens there is and auto focus / manual switch, and a temporary “push for auto focus” button.
On top of the hand hold you have zoom rocker, magnification for focus button and direct menu, that also works with the joysticks. There is a hot shoe that can accommodate lights and other accessories. There are electronics in the shoe that can interface with
On the top handle, there are the playback controls, a second zoom rocker and record button, joystick, and two assignable buttons. On the front there is a built in stereo mic, next to that are two XLR inputs, with each input having a “line, mic, mic+ phantom power switch. There is a third input that is a stereo 3.5mm jack for using mics.
The kit I received for review also included a power supply, battery charger, two batteries a BP-U35 and a BP-U70, that last around 2.5 and 4.5 hours. The media they supplied for recording was a Sony 160 GB Tough CFexpress Type A card, and reader.
I added a Sony 1-542-296, short shotgun mic that I had from a vintage Sony DSR-300 DVCAM camcorder, and a shoulder strap from an old DV or Digital-8 camcorder. For being able to record in both media slots, I used an OWC Atlas 256 SDXC V90 card.
When I went to add a Manfrotto compatible tripod plate I realized something wasn’t right. The bottom of the Z200 has a 3/8” screw hole, not a 1/4” like every other camcorder, including other Sonys, that I have used since 2006. Therefore I had to go to an old, giant, Bogen 3066 tripod that had one, stored under its plate.
For this review, I took the Z200 on a trip to Israel. Yes, there is a war going on, but so far the latest ceasefire has coincided with my trip, and lasted through out, but there was a mass terrorist attack that was foiled on February 20, that would have killed hundreds, had they succeeded. I did want to get to the Gaza Envelope, to see first hand the sites of the October 7 massacre first hand, and speak to survivors, but due to winter storms and issues on the ground, it was not possible this trip. I did two main tests of the camera out in the field. First I went hiking in Mitzpe Ramon National Park, (South of Be’eir Sheva in the Negev Desert,) for three days. This is like Israel’s Grand Canyon. Second, I used the camcorder to record a comedy show benefit called Comedy for Koby, that had several American comics do stand up in Jerusalem and several other cities to raise money for the Koby Mandel Foundation, providing help and social services to people who survived terrorist attacks or family members who lost a family members in a terrorist attacks.
I’m a big fan of dessert landscapes. I find the hues of the different types of geologic formations and rocks beautiful. In the Valley of Fire outside Las Vegas, Nevada I tested the Canon XF605, which is Canon’s equivalent camcorder. Shooting on a hike, where you are going up and down rock formations to get interesting shots, allows you to see how well the camera stands up to getting bumped around. While I took the Z200 on the plane in an old Petrol camcorder backpack, along with my laptop and Canon XC10 (back up camera), wireless mics, batteries chargers, etc., all of this was way to heavy and bulky to hike with. Once in Israel, switched to a simple backpack for transporting in the car, but most of the time I hung it around my neck with a strap.
This was a good place to put the camera through its paces. One of the biggest challenges was shooting in canyons where one wall was in the sun and the other was shadow. It was a little too tough for any of the auto settings to get a good looking shot. Playing with the variable ND wheel and the iris, I was able to get a decent picture with the tough contrast.
The range of the zoom lens was incredible. At one point we saw vultures perched at the top of the canyon from the bottom, a distance of probably 1000 feet. I was able to zoom in, focus and see them close up. A few minutes later I saw movement on a canyon wall further down. It was a person. I was able to see him clearly from what I’d estimate to be 2000 to 3000 feet away. The zoom rocker itself is very sensitive over most of the zoom range, although I found it ramp up as you get to full wide.
Overall the outdoor footage was great. In shots where I was dealing with bright highlights on one side of a canyon, that were close to overexposed, and darker shadows on the other, I was able to make it work using Adobe Premiere Pro’s color correction. Bringing the highlights down, equalized things. The built in mics did a good job picking up the ambient sounds of the canyon, Israeli fighter jets practicing above the canyon, and the sound of my wife’s voice telling me to “hurry up.”
There are a lot of buttons, wheels and switched on the left side of the camera, that you should get to know quite well by touch, as you won’t always be able to see them in a dark room or if you are doing a hand held shot and can’t move the camera to look for the button. In one instance while hiking, all of a sudden, my audio disappeared. It turned out that after a few minutes of experimenting, I realized that I hit the “S&Q” button. That is a special mode for speed effects, and mutes the sound.
The real world test as a production camera was in a theater in Jerusalem. I volunteered to record a benefit comedy show, for the Koby Mandel Foundation. The foundation is named after a 13 year old boy who was torn apart (while still alive,) by terrorists. His parents founded an organization that helps family members of terror victims, and terror victims who were injured and survived, deal with the trauma through therapy, camps, social workers. The foundation brings American comedians on a 7 – 10 day trip to Israel, with comedy shows in 6 or 7 cities.
I lucked out that the Jerusalem theater was a 12 minute walk from my AirBnB. The Sony camera was packed in a 18 year old Petrol backpack, with my Canon XC10 back up camera, my 25 year old Sennheiser G2 wireless mic, an Azden digital wireless as back up, and the camera power supply and batteries. I didn’t feel like it was too heavy to run around with. The Z200 seems light to me, therefore not too heavy to run around with.
The theater itself was a professional set up with a great crew. Most of the theaters I shoot in around southern California, there is no good place for the camera. We normally have to stick the tripod over seats in the back of the house, as fire codes, don’t allow cameras in aisles. This theater had a camera position in the lighting / sound control area in the rear center of the house. They were also able to give me a direct XLR feed from the audio board.
When I got the audio feed in to input 2, it was way too low. I was able to hit the “audio settings” button and bring up the settings for all of the inputs. I saw that input 2 had a pad of 70db. Raising it to 50db did the trick. Any incidental adjustments after that were done with the audio input dials. While I added the old Sony short shotgun for ambient sound, I actually liked the camera’s built-in mic’s sound better.
Normally I would have shot something like this using my Libec (LANC) zoom / record controller, but I forgot it at home. Using the zoom rocker on the camera itself was not horrible. I wasn’t doing a lot of zooming, and kept a medium wide shot most of the time. When you do go towards full wide, there is a tendency for the zoom to suddenly ramp up in speed. The image stabilization was much better than the Canon XF605 that I reviewed a couple years ago. With the XF605 on a tripod, if you panned the camera would “keep going” after you stopped physically moving the camera. You’d need to shut off the stabilization while on a tripod.
One feature on the camera that I wanted to try but couldn’t was an auto tracking feature that emulates a PTZ camera. This mode allows the camera to be set up on a tripod, on a wide angle. You set the camera to record and/or output 1080, and to “body tracking.” It will use the whole 5K sensor to follow and “zoom in“ on a person walking around on stage. This will allow you to have a “virtual” camera person if needed.
I found towards the end of the shoot that I’d made an error in setting up the camera, but due to the camera’s low light performance, it didn’t matter too much. I had the “variable ND” on and set all the way down, which I thought was off. Set up was a bit confusing as the background was an LED video wall. It was a bit dark otherwise. I bumped it up to 9db of gain to get everything looking correct. Towards the end of the show I used the light on my phone to check the settings, and saw the ND was on a low setting, not off. Turning it off, I was able to turn off the gain. The last act went out into the front aisle of the audience, which of course, wasn’t properly lit. The Z200 dealt with it well.
I had to return the Z200 a few days after I returned from Israel, so it could be sent to someone else. Sony sent me another one a couple day later to do a few last things with. This one, was missing the LCD hood, and was labeled “prototype” on the bottom.
A call came in from a regular client that they were screening a documentary, and wanted me to record the man who was the subject of the documentary, doing Q and A after. The venue was a poorly lit home theater with 50 people. My tripod and the Z200 was set up about 17′ from the person speaking. My on camera light is fairly powerful. I use this set up with my Canon XA50 (small 1” sensor camera). My experience with Canon cameras was that the 1” sensors is that they can go up to 30 db of gain, and have a clean signal. Having had to go to 9db of gain in the Jerusalem theater with no problem, I figured going to 18db of gain on the higher end Sony, it wouldn’t be a problem. I was wrong. Unfortunately the footage was very noisy. Fortunately I was able to somewhat fix it in post.
I asked a Sony engineer about the difference in low light performance. He said that the manufacturers measure their gain different ways. On the Z200 18 db of gain is equal to 6400 ISO. Being the inquisitive guy I am, I decided to set up a low light test in my family room, setting up the Z200 and my Canon ZA50. It was dimly lit, and I tried it with 0, 12, 18, and 30 db of gain, with and without an on camera light. I found that my Canon XA50 was not only so much better in low light, the gain was much cleaner than the Z200’s gain. I did not expect that from the older, less expensive Canon. The Canon XA50, also has a 1” sensor, but sold new for about $2400 (I bought it used for $1000), has been my main camera for the last year or so. (See below video of side by side testing) I was told about a “noise suppression” setting deep in the camera’s menu that could possibly help with the noise when gained up above 9db. Some noise reduction algorithms are good, others make people look unnatural. Unfortunately, I had to send back camera number two before I had a chance to try it.
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While editing the footage on my trip in Adobe Premiere Pro, on my 8-core, 2.6 GHz, i9 HP Zbook with 32 GB RAM, and NVIDIA RTX-3070 GPU, it was impossible to use on battery only. This is a very resource heavy codec. I had to plug in to the AC power, in order to edit, but I needed to lower the resolution of playback. Even then, it struggled with smooth playback.
When I got home I put it on my custom i9 based workstation with 128 GB RAM, NVIDIA RTX-6000 GPU, and the LaCie 12-Big Thunderbolt-3 as the main storage. It worked much better on that. I got the best performance on an HP Z6 workstation, with a 56-Core, 4.8 GHz Xeon CPU and 3x NVIDIA A6000 GPUs, and a 1 TB Z Turbo PCIe drive for storage. I probably could have created proxies to edit with more easily, but I like to see things as best I can when I’m evaluating a camera. So for editing the Z200’s higher bit rate footage, the more computer power the better. If what you have isn’t working, go for proxies.
When I review a camera, I like to join a Facebook user group for that camera, to see if there is anything I should look for. While I did not experience this personally, some Z200 and NX800 users in the Z200 / NX800 Facebook group have reported the Z200 and NX800 cameras freezing up on longer shoots. The only way to unfreeze them was to remove the battery and restart the camera. Sony suggested to do a factory reset in the menu. One person reported that it did not solve the problem. I brought the problem up to Sony. They didn’t see this complaint as a major issue, as it was a very small percentage of cameras having the problem, Before NAB in April, they released a camera firmware update “to improve the cameras performance.” While the update didn’t specifically address the freezing issue, no one who did the update has had the freezing issue so far.
I would say my time with the Z200 was a mostly positive experience. The long lens will be amazing in some of the large venues I shoot in. This could be a nature or sports videographer’s dream camera, because of that great 24-480mm lens. The connectivity, lay out of controls are excellent, and so are the menus. I’m sure if I had the camera a couple more months, I’d work through some of the operational fumbles that I had. I could see using it on outdoor and well lit shoots. The Z200 does not perform well in low light, especially if you compare it to similar Canon 1” sensor cameras. If you are on a well lit set or outdoors, the Z200 / NX800 should be fine in most video production situations.
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