Will we ever see full frame slowmo on the FX9....?

[Danny_Schmidt]

I'd love to know!  It seems like we are one firmware update away from unlocking the full potential of the FX9.  I often find myself defaulting to my FX6 purely because of the frame rate options in full frame - especially when shooting wildlife.  I understand no camera is perfect, and we can't have it all, but it really would be nice to see FF 4K60 at the very least.  Obviously I'd be stoked with anything beyond that, but at a minimum I think we need some kind of slow motion capabilities utilizing the full sensor.

Thoughts?   Ideas?  Anyone out there with a crystal ball?

[alisterchapman]

I think it's pretty safe to say no. The 6K sensor readout in the FX9 clearly can't go above 30fps which is why Sony had to include the 5K scan mode and the 2K full frame scan modes (to read 6K requires double the bandwidth of 4K). I'm quite certain that if it was possible it would have been done early on in the cameras life. It appears to be a sensor issue and the penalty you pay for having a 6K sensor that allows FF + s35 with at least 4K of pixels. If you were to read only 4K of pixels at FF there would be some nasty aliasing and moire artefacts, to have a decent looking image you need to read all 6K of pixels. It's also worth observing that the FX9's 4K 120fps raw mode is limited to s35 scan and is only 10 bit. It's also interesting to look at the FX30 which is another lower cost Sony camera with a 6K sensor and observe that to shoot 4K 120fps with the FX30 you have to crop by 1.5x so that only 4K of pixels are read out.

[julienjarry]

I agree with @alisterchapman - I would say no because of the amount of data it takes to ingest 6k at higher frame rates. I would have loved to see 48 fps but I don't think that is going to happen.