Do you remember the iconic Geico ad campaign with the caveman who was so offended by their slogan, It’s so easy, a caveman could do it?
It turns out that Sony might have one-upped Geico, because they’ve made cinema-quality compact cameras so easy to use that literal children can do it. Sony teamed up with Church Production and sent the Bell Shoals Church Brandon, Florida campus seven a7 IV’s and two FX3’s to use during their worship camp led by their production director, Andy Wingate.
...it’s a way for kids from the ages of first to fifth grade to learn about worship in the church...
The Sony Alpha 7 IV and Alpha FX3 have received the Church Production Road Test Certification.
“Every summer we do something called Kids Worship Camp here at Bell Shoals. And what that is, is it’s a way for kids from the ages of first to fifth grade to learn about worship in the church in different areas. So there are kids that serve in the production side of things like behind the scenes in video control. There are kids that serve on the photography side of things, and then even more than that. And [at] the end of the week it culminates in a production that the kids put on by themselves. And so they’re running every camera, they’re running every device,” Andy explained.
The Sony hardware immediately made sense to his grade school students who were eager to learn. “So the a7 IV is pretty compact and it's fairly light for a big full-frame camera. There were three main settings in manual mode that I taught the kids to use. And there were just three knobs that they had to know how to use. Obviously, the on and off button, and then there was one for shutter speed, aperture, and iso. And those were all fairly easy and just simple enough for the kids to pick up on,” Andy noted.
...it was really cool to see the progression of these kids who have never run a camera...
And the results? Andy was just short of amazed “When we introduced the Sony FX3's to the kids who were in the production track, the first thing that came out of most of their mouths was like, wow, this is a really cool camera we’re getting to use. They were used to an iPhone camera or something like that, but this was a truly professional camera that they had the opportunity to use. And then not only that, but they got to see their images on the big projector screens in the main room as the director would take those shots. And so it was really cool to see the progression of these kids who have never run a camera before in their lives, pick up this Sony and see the progression from them just taking random videos of their friends running around to all of a sudden now, a week later, they are getting specific shots for this production that we do, and they’re listening to calls from the director and they are able to respond to changes in brightness and color temperature on the fly because, I mean, honestly, because of the simplicity of the camera, it was easy enough to do that. And so it was really cool seeing that progression and seeing the final product that they were able to put out with it.”
Using the hardware itself impressed Andy, as he particularly enjoyed the professional feel of the lenses Sony provided. “The glass that we use for those, it was like a 24 to 70. I love that lens. In fact, one of the things that stood out to me was the aperture ring that was on the lens itself. You could have the option to have it be kind of cliquey or smooth, just kind of a smooth gradient from dark to light. And so in video, that is an extremely useful thing. Also, just the clarity of it, the smoothness of the zoom. So one of the things that I like doing a lot, especially using handheld cameras, is kind of the whip pans and also the snap zooms kind of quick ins and outs and that kind of thing, and that the smoothness of the zoom ring on that lens really allowed for us to do that pretty effectively.”
To top everything off, Sony was more than available to teach Andy and his team about the gear they’d be using. “Whenever we hopped on the call with Van from Sony, first of all, I mean he was just a super easy going guy, but then also he was a great teacher. He was just very thorough in how he walked Cheyenne and I through the camera menu options and everything that we were going to ask—he kind of got to it before we even asked about it, which was great. He knew the camera so well, it was almost like he made the thing or something. He just was so familiar with that thing.
Overall, Bell Shoals had a stellar time with the new Sony gear. Take a few minutes now with our good friend Marcel Patillo and watch the whole story from Andy about his experience with Sony.
For more information on the Sony Alpha 7 IV and Alpha FX3, click links.
