Whenever you’re shopping for new equipment, it’s easy to fall into particular traps. “Newer is better.” “More expensive is better.” “Big-name brands are better.” “More popular options are better.” Of course, there’s a grain of truth in each of these, but none is a hard-and-fast rule—and if you take them as law, you might end up disappointed!
There’s nowhere this is more true than with cameras. Just diving into the specifications of one camera can be enough to make your head spin: vast matrices of resolutions, framerates, formats, and bitrates spill out from dropdowns, reviews get thrown out by people who’ve only tested the device once or twice, and the ever-present risk of a camera company paying for positive scores looms overhead. What are you supposed to do?
Well, your best bet is to talk to people who actually use those products! Here at BCC Live, we’ve gone through a fair few different cameras in the name of shooting stills, video, and live broadcasts. For years, our main workhorse for broadcasting was the Sony PXW-X70, or “PX70” in our shorthand. But its successor, the PXW-Z90 (or “PX90”), offers additional performance—at an additional price! Are either of them right for you? Is it worth saving money to get a used PXW-X70 at a much lower price than a new PXW-Z90? Why did we end up using these cameras over any other option? Let’s go through the details.
What the PXW-X70 and PXW-Z90 Have in Common
First of all, both cameras look functionally identical. Though the additional controls and inputs belie their status as professional-grade camcorders, the size and form factor bring to mind early-2000s “home movie” camcorders. Their light weight certainly helps with this impression: both cameras weigh about 3 pounds when fully equipped with accessories and a battery, or about 2 pounds in their basic configuration. If you were handed one quickly, your first thoughts may be “small, lightweight—must be low-performance.” But the opposite is true!
In fact, both cameras provide broadcast-quality performance in a remarkably compact package. They can shoot at 4K resolution and 29.97 frames per second or 1080p and 59.97 frames per second without any difficulties. While bigger-budget (and bigger-size!) cameras and camcorders can shoot at higher resolutions and framerates, the fact of the matter is that the practical video pipeline for most of the world maxes out at 1080p. Shooting at 4K or higher allows you to support ultra-HD displays—but most people don’t have the display resolution (or the Internet bandwidth) to handle that. Higher resolutions also allow you to crop in significantly while editing without losing quality—but when you’re shooting for a broadcast or have your shot properly framed, that’s a non-issue!
Of course, resolution isn’t everything. You can have all the pixels in the world and it won’t make a difference if you can’t get the shot! Fortunately, the rest of the camcorder offers a great deal to make it our weapon of choice. With both electronic and optical image stabilization keeping the picture rock-steady, a 12x optical zoom to pick up shots from a distance, and of course that lightweight package allowing you to go wherever you need, you can shoot great footage from essentially anywhere you can get yourself.
…perhaps from one of these angles? (The PXW-Z90 is the one on the right!)
But that’s not even the best part. One of the biggest draws for us is battery life. We can be shooting continuously for up to four hours on a single battery, and since each battery weighs less than a pound, you can carry enough of them to shoot for more than a day without slowing yourself down at all. The rest of the camcorder is ready for endurance, too—the sensor holds up remarkably well in low light, and with the 256 gigabyte cards we use, either one can record in 1080p for at least nine hours. If we need to, we can run all day and all night, and having a lightweight camera means it’s not exhausting to do so!
No disrespect intended towards our colleagues and competitors, but it’s very entertaining to see other teams using bigger, heavier “professional-grade” cameras with shorter-duration batteries and storage, with all of their strengths mitigated because they’re shooting for broadcast at the same resolution and framerate as our compact and lightweight cameras. In essence, a camera like the PXW-X70 or PXW-Z90 is perfect for the kind of work we do. But that may make you wonder…
What’s Better About the PXW-Z90 for the Price?
A new PXW-Z90 costs about $2,800. Though it’s now out of production, you can get a used PXW-X70 for about $1000 less. That’s a not-insignificant difference—and so far, it’s probably sounded like they aren’t any different. Same shape and size and weight, same resolutions and battery life… what’s to be gained?
Well, quite a bit! The “PX90” was released three years after its predecessor, and of course technology improved in that time. One of the more “hidden” improvements is the sensor—though it shoots at the same resolution and framerates on both, the PXW-Z90’s sensor is much less noisy, which allows you to shoot at higher gain for low-light performance without losing image quality. To take advantage of that, the viewfinder is of a higher resolution on the new model—though the flip-out LCD screen is identical.
The biggest benefit, however, is in the software. The PXW-Z90 gains a very capable (and customizable) autofocus with integrated face tracking. Couple that with the image stabilization built in and you get a genuine point-and-shoot capability—though with a much higher image quality than that term usually implies! It’s entirely possible to “shoot blind” with the PX90, holding the camera in a position or angle where you can’t see either display, and count on the face detection and autofocus to keep your subjects looking great throughout. That’s no small feat!
It may be that you don’t need these extra features. Indeed, we keep several PXW-X70s on hand to this day, because the extra software benefits on the PX90 don’t make much difference for tripod shooting, and stationary livestream cameras are a persistent use case for us. In essence, you’re getting a great camera either way—you just need to decide if you want to pay more for a significant jump in versatility and ease of use with the PXW-Z90. Both are great, so we still use both!
The Sony PXW-X70 and PXW-Z90 in the Production Pipeline
As you could probably piece together from the previous sections, we put our cameras to very active use! The primary purpose for both types is as mobile cameras for event broadcasting. With one of these Sony camcorders and a Teradek Bond backpack to transmit the video signal, we can provide mobile “in-the-field” footage for our broadcasts from anywhere, while doing anything. Anywhere on the planet with a cellular connection, running on foot alongside athletes and performers, riding on the back of motorcycles, from boats or rafts or kayaks in the ocean, we can go anywhere and livestream anything. Having a camera that’s as lightweight and portable as the PXW-Z90 while shooting high-quality footage is absolutely indispensable for us.
And that endurance is a massive benefit as well! An IRONMAN triathlon usually starts just before dawn and ends well after midnight, covering a wide variety of terrains and climates in the interim. To get the best shots and the best stories of our excellent athletes, we have to be on our A-game that whole time—there’s no time to slow down and rest, and every second spent changing batteries or storage cards is a second that could be spent capturing the perfect moment. Using cameras that don’t slow us down and can shoot the whole day gives us a huge leg up over other teams. That respectable low-light performance also means we can be right there with the athletes all the way to the end on the same camera.
For us, the PXW-Z90 is the perfect camcorder for active and dynamic shooting in any environment our clients need. Though the PXW-X70 is less capable for our needs, it still puts in terrific work as a stationary camera or second camera, and its price point means we’ll likely replace them one-for-one in the event one reaches the end of its lifespan. It’s a match made in heaven—nothing we’ve used before or since has quite that combination of features to fulfill our needs. We’ll be looking forward to using these cameras and their successors for as long as we can!
