Sony Xperia PRO: Expert’s Panel Discussion | B&H Event Space By B&H Photo Video

Good afternoon welcome back to the b h virtual event, space. We are back with another expert panel, and today we're talking about the new Sony Xperia pro. I don't even know how to describe this thing. It is that much of a beast in terms of content creation for the professional creators out there, it's a phone, it's streams, it's a file, transfer um device. So that is why I brought on my panel of experts. So we got as you see here- Ben man, love from Sony, Darren Carroll and Jason long and Vivian lee um, I'm gonna! Let you guys do the introductions of yourself, because clearly everybody always does it better their own way.

So Ben start us off sure, hey dark! So my name is Ben man love, I'm a senior pro support representative for Sony. That means my job is to do outreach and support to working professional, photographers and videographers. I work with the folks that deal with our cameras in the field making great content. You know I make their lives easier and I have to say I'm really excited to talk about the Xperia pro today. Awesome.

Well, we're excited to have you on. This is my first time having you on the virtual event, space Ben. So hopefully you know we make a good impression here. Your everything is right, riding on your shoulders. Today, oh you're going to get a lot of pressure.

I didn't want to make you nervous in the first minute or two or anything but uh. We do have some wonderful creators here with us. Darren tell us a little about yourself. Okay, thanks, dark! First, this is my first time in the event space, so I hope I make somewhat of a good impression um. I have been a professional photographer for over 25 years.

I work a lot in the sports and portrait spaces. Uh clients, like sports, illustrated ESPN golf digest: dick's sporting goods, I'm part of the official photography team for the US open golf and tennis. So I do a lot of deadline work and I do a lot of work for clients who need really quick turnaround on images, and I think that's part of the reason why I'm here, because I had a chance to test out the Xperia pro and the way that it's going to change the. How photographers work in terms of getting things in to clients on deadline is uh. It's really going to be astounding.

I think so. I'm happy to be here to be able to talk about it great to have you Darren. There is no better person than a sports photographer who we know that the images everything has to be done on the fly, like you said, deadline deadline deadline. You are a wonderful voice to have on today, so welcome to the phoenix virtual event space, and now they are no strangers to the virtual event space. The wonderful duo check them out on YouTube Jason, long's video channel on YouTube Vivian lee Jason long.

Welcome thanks for having us back again dark. So for those of you who don't know us uh, I'm Jason long and together with my girlfriend Vivian, we run a YouTube channel on hybrid shooting and hybrid shooting, just a fancy way of saying, shooting both photos and videos, and we love to bring fun educational content to those who just want to create something amazing, whether it's their first time picking up the camera or even pros who are learning to learn about the latest tech, that's sort of where we come in and just provide that kind of fun. Information for folks, yeah, so hi, I'm Vivian, and I like to say I'm the brains behind the operation. I don't know about that um, but really I handle all the business operations behind the channel and I also shoot all Jason's videos and for us, you know, travel and on location is such a big part of our channel, because that's what we're really passionate about. So the fact that we're able to bring that excitement to our viewers um that's a way that we like to engage with them and bring in that content, especially with the Xperia pro.

So we're excited to share some of that stuff with you guys today. Well we're excited to have you guys back for Darren and be nit's a pleasure to have you guys joining us for the first time Ben we're going to start with you. You know what everybody wants to talk about when you get a piece of equipment out like this, and it's the specs so give us a rundown of what we're looking at with the new Xperia pro as far as what does it do yeah? Well, so that's a perfect question dark. So you know it's its funny that the device does so much that in a lot of ways, we've struggled internally to say what do we really call this thing right, because you look at it, and you say: well, it's a phone and to that extent yes, it is. You know it's got.

You know, you know all the phone features you expect latest uh, qualcomm, snapdragon chipset. Furthermore, you know 512 gigs of storage, all that kind of fun stuff, but really what it is. It's a communications device for creators right, so the Xperia pro main features that you're looking at that's really going to set it apart. It's got this HDMI input here on the bottom, that's going to accept a HDMI uh source from really anything it's going to use. Furthermore, it's got a 5g, millimeter, wave and sub 6 connectivity in here so that you can take that HDMI input and then stream it out beauty of that HDMI input too, is it's also, if you notice it's got this really great 21 9 aspect ratios, six and a half inch screen.

Furthermore, it's a 4k HDR OLED sports 10 bit color depth. We can use that as an external monitor, which is really phenomenal. So we've got this. You know really great high speed connection for streaming. We've got the external monitor, you know and really some pro based features such as the network, visual visualizer app.

You know the camera, the um, sorry, the phone has an uh 360 degree antenna array, so I can get really great signal. You know great reliability that a pro would expect, and then I've got this really neat app. That's going to show me: hey, you've got perfect connectivity over here or over here. So maybe you can angle this to get better signal now. The other thing too is we've, got that great the ability to hook into really any device with a HDMI output, but the Xperia pro also has a really very capable camera system in and of itself.

It shares the same uh camera system of our Xperia one mark ii, which has a three camera array, is featuring a 16, a 24 and a 70 millimeter lens, and when you combine that with the digital zoom, it's a pretty seamless, 16 to 200 millimeter lens experience, it's got our photo pro app, so it's really the same interface as an alpha. So if you're used to a great content creation using our output devices, this is you pick it up. You go take some photos with it. It's just like being at home as it were. It's also got our cinema pro app uh with color space from our Venice cameras.

So if you are uh really want to create some great movies, you could do that here. You know featuring um. Excuse me, 4k up to 60p and 10 bites so really full-featured for both the content creature, whether you're going to cont use your Xperia pro to create that content or use another device to create that content and then share it rapidly. It's its really a well-thought-out device. So between the content, creation on the device itself and the inputs, it's right, why we hesitate to call it a phone because yeah you can make phone calls on it, and you know you can text with it, but that's not what it's meant for right.

It's meant for that uh working professional. You know whether it's your someone like Darren where you're you know, ftp in your files or someone like Jason Vivian, who you know you're broadcasting, yourself, uh and really anywhere in between it. It will allow you to do that now. Now you notice bent hat I had absolutely no idea how to properly refer to this, because it does so much, so it's like send it to the Sony guy. Let him talk about it.

Um yeah! You gave me the hard question. I don't know quite how to define it. You know, there's no good roll up the tongue, but you know we call it communication device, but you know the inclination to say phone and that's that's not right. It's way more than that, I mean it's a great problem to have when you don't know what to call something, because it simply does, and it's not like it does. One thing you know perfect and then a couple other things decent.

It seems to just across the board and- and you hit the nail on the head, it's a professional device for professionals yeah, and it seems to just crush the workflow now Darren after that intro I'm like I almost wanted to skip, and I wanted to like this is the ultimate test I mean, like I said, a professional sports photographer. I can't imagine there's a lot of room for error, so I'm thinking you have to be on the ball constantly. You need a device that you can't say. Well, I got a bad signal. Tell us about your experience in using this and how this works into your professional workflow right.

I think that that has a lot to do with it, because if you blink or look the wrong way in the middle of the game, you know you could miss the picture and what we can't have and what we've been dealing with. Uh is having to stop and having to in order to transmit our pictures having to stop and look and deal with a might device or something like that. All sorts of connectivity problems, you name it uh, for example, if I'm at a golf tournament and I shoot a golfer teeing off, and he yanks his tee shot left into all sorts of trouble, and I need to get down the fairway to shoot a picture of his next shot. I can't be standing on the tee box. Looking at the back of my camera going okay, I like this picture.

I like this picture. I like this picture, and now I need to make sure that my camera is connected to the might, that I've got in my fanny pack, and I'm going to hit one button, and I'm going to send one picture at a time back to my editors and all of a sudden everybody's down the fairway, you guys hit a second shot already, and I missed it. With this, I plugged the cameras with an USB or Ethernet connection into the Xperia pro and I walk down the fairway and the images are going out of the camera into the Xperia pro 5g network ftping, not just one picture that I pick but all of them, so my editors can do their jobs and edit- and I can do my job and shoot, and you know that that's a game changer being able to do that. Um. We really for years now, don't get me wrong.

The technology, in all the cameras and all the transmission devices over the past couple of years has grown exponentially to the point where we can send a couple of pictures in near real time, but that sort of defeats the purpose of having us out there, because now we're technicians, we're editors, and we're photographers, whereas with a device like this, where we can reliably stream images from our cameras into our transmission devices and get the entire takeout all at once, everybody's able to do what their job is, what they're supposed to be doing out there. So it's its a huge improvement um, I don't. I had worked done a shoot in November, I was out in the middle of a lake shooting a rower, no no wires anywhere, and I was able to send my entire take back to a ftp server from the middle of the lake um. You know not just one picture, not just two so for me to be able to do that. Have my editors see it or for me to be on a commercial shoot and have my clients see everything and approve the pictures on site in or off site in near real time is? Is its a game changer? So what you're saying is you don't want to go back to the days of having someone grab your memory cards and run out and listen, I'm I'm old enough to remember where, when our idea of getting pictures back to the office quickly was driving from an event to the airport and putting our film on a plane to fly overnight to New York to the time-life photo lab, so I mean that's where we've come from since then, but we used to think handing off a memory card and having some kids run halfway across the golf course was rapid delivery.

Now this is, you know this is where things need to be. This is it now for Jason and Vivian? You guys are using it in a completely different way, whereas streaming I mean we already saw if anybody watched, Jason and Vivian's YouTube stream earlier, if you haven't check it out on jasonvong on YouTube, but I watched the stream crystal clear. The audio was great um tell us about not only what your experience was like streaming with the Xperia pro, but how it differs from how you guys streamed previously. Oh, man um. We definitely had a lot of fun today, like dark said, we kind of brought the phone out with us and had some breakfast and uh eat and chat with some of our viewers.

I think they call that what mustang in Korean- and it's a very it's surprisingly like a very popular genre nowadays, where you kind of bring the viewers along with you, and you eat, and you like to connect with your audience. It's like with a friend, that's like we bring it to them by eating with them, and they can enjoy their coffee and breakfast with us too. I didn't, I didn't taste any of the breakfast when I watched, I didn't translate for me. Oh, I'm sorry I should, we should have done a better job kind of describing the taste you know the flake of the croissant or how the coffee tasted with the oat milk and the sugar round, two we'll probably we'll have round two we're, not we're not exactly experts at the uh at this at these types of genres. But you know when Sony asks us to test out the Xperia pro to check it out.

You know one of the things that really screamed to me was twitch streaming and for those of you who are unfamiliar with twitch streaming, it's this really popular platform. Where people go live, they play video games um, they do a bunch of other stuff. Do anything on there and, like I mentioned you know they, they there's a subsection. It's john recall IRL, which is in real life in real life streaming, and they again they bring the viewers along. We were watching this girl going out to a Halloween party in Japan.

We were, they were watching this one guy that he was just walking to Chick-fil-A to get lunch or something like that in New York um. So it was pretty cool because you can essentially bring people with you like on your day-to-day life, just like how we just brought um our audience with us to like our local coffee shop, and we were just like hey. Let's just chat, and I love it. I love how casual it is that we can be. You know I think someone was asking us in the livestream they're like.

Is there secretly a computer behind the setup right now we're like? No, you know I picked up the camera, I picked up the camera, and I was just going like 360 with it. You know not 360s and 360 camera but 360 perspective, and I was like look guys: there's no voodoo magic, there's no uh wizard of oz, you know giant head. Is that your cord? You know, there's no giant head, you know behind the thing pulling strings, it's just this device right here, and I feel like something like this allows us to be a little more mobile, mobile and nimble. You know just to be like hey, we can, you know. Hopefully, we can do this a little more when travel opens up again.

We can just be like, after a day of shooting, and we're just sitting down chilling at a caf? chilling out for lunch, and we can like share photos share whatever we got the shots thereof, you know, because we like travel, we do on location so much a lot of times. I want to see like Jason's natural reaction, sometimes like we don't get to capture that on camera, like there's, sometimes like we'll like to be in place, and we're like. Oh my gosh, this is so amazing, and then I'm like wait was I rolling the camera. Did we get b-roll because, like we're just really immersed at the moment, so just the fact that we'd be able to have this as an option to bring with us so that we show everything live and essentially really absolutely um? I think it's really cool, I think uh we were in Japan like for autumn, and then we were. I was climbing up at least to go, see Mount Fuji, and it was an it almost turned out to be like a very disappointing day, because the cloud cover which was super intense- and I was like- oh man, and I was like documenting it.

You know my journey all the way up to the pagoda to catch the glimpse of the epic mountain, but I was just like doing 15-second stories. You know, but I'm just thinking with the Xperia pro I could have set this up because you know I brought that with you right when I was about to give up the wind. The gust was just blowing the clouds away, and I was freaking out internally and externally kind of yeah, and I was- and I was just thinking back to that moment. I was like if I could have set this up and just capture that Gus, that wind, and you know the epic review of Mount Fuji. I think that would be awesome.

So there's a lot of potential. I think for creators such as myself, IRL, twitch, streamers or any professional who's looking to you, know, set this up and do some live streams. I think this is portable mobile, really casual setup, and we love it. We love it a lot yeah. What was your guys main downfall in streaming before? Was it just being more or less tethered or having to sacrifice quality connection? This was huge.

There was one time we had. Oh sorry, I was going to say there's this one time we did this live stream, and we just had our phone with us, but it was during like a release like a press release or something- and I remember um- we wanted to go, live to capture like the reaction, and it was funny because Jason was just holding his phone up, and he would like point out the thing and then flip it the front cam to like his face, and then it'll like blow up right onto his face and of course you know, we were also worried about the connectivity and essentially the quality that was being produced like sometimes the sound didn't pick up very well, or it would pick up like sound that we didn't really intend to pick up, and I know a lot of times after we do these lives. You take it off your channel, you don't really keep it yeah, I'm I'm always very conscious of like people who are tuning in after the fact, especially like when it's live. You know you're you're kind of fumbling a little. Furthermore, you know.

People who are watching live are a little more forgiving, but you have people who are watching after the fact, especially something like a launch of a new product like new cameras, they'll be like well, I'm I'm not sitting around waiting for like you to like to fix your camera, and then we're moving yeah. You know, so that's why I always seem to take. I always just take it down so seeing how having something like this, you know where the quality is a little more clear. I think uh. Furthermore, I think people who are tuning in after the fact would be a little appreciated a little a lot better quality.

Too definitely I mean, I think, we're at a place with technology where five ten fifteen years ago or when technologies, a certain technology, are newer. We can get over the bumps and people are gonna, be more forgiving. It's like when everybody started doing zoom webinars. You know if your kid comes running screaming in front of your green screen, all right, it's acceptable, but once you get a little further on with the technology now, especially with you know, with professionals working where you have people who are making a living doing these streams and the viewer expects the utmost quality. Now.

That being said, I think a huge thing with this Ben is really the Sony ecosystem being built out. I mean you have every major brand doing it where you want to keep people within your ecosystem, not just for you know a compatibility thing, but it's also a peace of mind issue where I want to know that hey if a firmware update comes out, and I'm shooting with the know the Sony alpha line of cameras, and I'm, and I have a Xperia pro anything that Sony sees, that is going to make my experience better, whether it's a bug fix or whether it's an upgrade. I don't have to worry about. You know a third-party brand coming down a year later, when it's a day late in a dollar short the ecosystem's. Already there yeah and I'll tell you, you know it's something that you know on the alpha side.

I say alpha side, but really you know we're all digital imaging. Now you know, Xperia has is, is part of uh the same group now, which is really phenomenal. I think that's why you're seeing a device like this, you know, but we've really built our brand over the past decade of actively listening to customers and then implementing features that they've been asking for, and one thing I do want to touch on dark. Is that the while we talk about you know Sony ecosystem, and you know, of course we think that everybody should be in it because it's the best, you know if, for whatever reason, you're not Expedia pro will still work, you know it's uh, it's its camera agnostic in the sense that you know. If you've made a horrible mistake in your life, and you've bought in somebody else's camera, that's, okay! You could still use this device to live stream.

You know um, and I think you know, Jason and uh, Darren and Vivian have all touched on this and that you know this is a really foundational piece of technology. I think you know in a lot of ways that you know it was announced the same day as alpha one, and I don't think that that's an um that wasn't an accident right alpha one in a lot of ways, was very foundational for the path that we see forward in stills and videos. But Xperia pro is that foundational technology for communications. You know you're, seeing that whether you're a YouTube live, streamer uh, you know a sports photographer, and we're also seeing even interest from TV stations. You know from newspapers, we say newspaper right, but paper part's, not important anymore.

It's a local news source. You know all these folks are looking at using this uh into their workflow. Absolutely definitely now Darren. Is there other than the file transfer? Are you know? Do you? Are you a big camera phone user? Do you ever pull out the camera on your phone and use it? I do. I do um, and you know I've been using the Xperia one mark ii for a while, and it's a seamless transition for it's the exact same.

Furthermore, I think Ben said that earlier it's the exact same camera, cinema pro uh same thing uh, so I mean yes, I use it for social media accounts and things like that. But you know in a pinch that the camera in it is amazing. Anyway, it's its not an alpha.9 too, it's not in you know an alpha seven but uh in terms of resolution and file size and things like that. But in terms of the controls and the image quality uh, it's far and away the best quality I've seen in a quote-unquote phone um, so yeah, there's that, but there's something else that I wanted to add to what Ben said, and that is. I think that the alpha one and the Xperia pro are indeed foundational, and they're meant to work together, and I don't have mine, yet it's on order, but you know when I do get it.

That's the first thing I'm going to do is just run it through its paces, because Sony has been great about listening to photographers in terms of how to make the cameras better, how to make the cameras sort of industry leading and what functionality do you need in it. And you know we saw that, for example, in the jump from the alpha 9 to the alpha 9 2 with voice captioning, we had been telling Sony. We need this, we need this. We need this. This is how we work, and this is what we need to incorporate this equipment into our workflow completely without having any workarounds or anything like that, and they gave it to us and the alpha one is going to be the same thing in terms of connectivity with a device like the Xperia pro in terms of uh image quality.

Everything that we have been asking for is being worked into it. So I just I can't wait to see how the two of these things are going to work together. It's going to be fantastic, definitely and Ben talking about that. You know Darren touched on it, uh and- and I think you touched upon it earlier- with the abilities of the camera. Now this is directly drawn.

I mean the camera the specs and the functionality of the camera is drawn from the alpha 9 series: correct yeah, that's correct! So you know. If you look at the autofocus system, you know it's got very similar like the eye tracking, even the animal eye tracking uh, compared to the alpha um. You know just like alpha 9. It can sample its sensor 60 times per second for autofocus and auto exposure calculations, uh 20 frames per second for the contiguous bursting mode um. You know it's its the exact same interface as well as alpha, so it's very easy to use um.

You know actually interesting enough. The same one feature that this has that alpha doesn't have actually, which is kind of neat, is uh. Are we call it 3d ITF sensor, it's a time of flight sensor, so you know the autofocus. It's just another assist for that autofocus capability, and we do share that. You know across the Xperia one mark too as well, and then you know on the video side, like I mentioned earlier in the introduction, it shares the same uh.

Well, not quite the same, but the color science is derived from our Venice. So you know you boot that up says powered by cine Alta and it is really gives that creator. You know kind of this ability to you know, go from a high-end video camera into experience. It all kind of seamlessly works together. Absolutely now, with all the upgrades and cameras now with the camera.

Phones, though, you've seen a lot more people moving to streaming, and I guess Jason and Vivian. You guys are the go-to on this with the YouTube channel a heavy amount of streaming. I mean it's, it's do you find yourself being torn between? You have the Sony alpha ecosystem of cameras rights there, it's so easy to connect it now and have this monitor for streaming. But the camera are the importance of the camera. The Xperia pro itself is so functional as Darren and Ben just went into.

How do you decide? How do you decide whether to stream from the camera through the Xperia pro or to just stream from the Xperia pro itself? You know? That's uh, that's that's a fantastic question. I mean like I guess like on a day where we're just like all right. We're feeling a little lazy today, we'll just we'll just use the uh, the mass t-star lenses on the uh Xperia bro right. But then you know, I don't know I'm kind of a quality snob. You can ask her.

There are moments, yeah yeah! I know like as much as we don't want to like to bring our gear around and things like that. You know most of the time we find ourselves like okay, we have to bring it because we can use this lens and get this compression and things like that, and we end up just bringing everything along with us regardless, even though we say we're always going to go minimal or something like that, especially with the Xperia pro promo video that some of you guys might have caught um we he were at the Griffith observatory, which is like a really you know popular spot in Los Angeles yeah- and I was like you know, hey, maybe there'd be a cool little thing that we can do. We grab a 70 or 200, so we have our friend tam to bring that lens, and the compression of the lens allows me and the grid observatory in the background. At the same time- and it's not like you know, with a wide-angle lens where it's like super far away- and I'm like here- look at this little tiny end of a thing right here. It's like literally like right next to me as big as my head.

So it's just that possibility of just inner playing with these different lenses. Not only do we have the built-in lenses on the phone, but we have access of arsenal of lenses that we have in our kit and another thing that we did, I think it's really cool is that we tapped into the faster wider aperture lenses right, we're talking 1.4 1.8 and when we're in like low light situations um we can. We can open up that aperture and just allow in a little more light, so the quality isn't as bad at night. That's true! It's kind of cheating too, to we have the a7s iii. We took that with us because, like when we first when we were shooting at Griffith like it was a golden hour, like the timing of it was beautiful, and we wanted to capture the colors epic, and you know, with everything you know, we also wanted to stay really distant, not having to like to have to be right in front of the observatory with people and things like that.

So we were able to find like a more remote area. That was just a little further off, but then with that compression, because we had the 7200, we could bring it a little closer and then afterwards we went out to Chinatown afterwards at night, and you know usually when we do like live streams or anything at night. We're always like battling with the issue of bad lighting and things like that. But you know with the s3 it's cheating, I'm telling you I'm going to call it. It's cheating, it's cheating, you know, but it doesn't matter how you get to the finish line: Jason cheetah, it's cheating, but you know just what these wider aperture lenses.

I mean you stick it on. Maybe something like an a7c that may not have that high ISO sensitivity. I mean it's still great. I mean like this is a much more a little more of a compact camera size. You know or talk about your favorite, the zb1.

You know you remember this right here. I remember that I ended up getting a white one, it's so cute, and these you know the Xperia pro just plays so well, even with something as big as the a7 s3, which is not even that big at all, but as tiny as the zv1. So we have options. We have a lot of options and that's what I love on a day where we're just feeling like eh the built-in lenses, but on days when, like I'm, feeling a little fancy, we bring out the best guys, that's usually Jason every day, he'll be like I'm going to set up for a live stream like I'm gonna, go really simple, and then I'll check back in an hour, and he's like sorry, I'm still setting up. I have to make sure the mic is good, and it's never like it's never simple.

So you keep gaffer's tape on you at all times. Don't you Jason? It's like full set up. You can't go any I why I already know. I already know why I even asked: why did I even ask? I should already know that you have a fully capable mobile option right there, and you're still going to go this whole setup, but you guys bring up a point and Darren had mentioned it earlier about being out in the middle of a lake. So all the airheads, all the techie people out there Ben are asking okay Darren's out in the middle of a lake, Jason and Vivian are going.

Who knows where up in the hills to get an observatory, so they don't have people in the background, the versatility? How are you guys doing it? I know that there were some some upgrades to the antenna system. Talk me through this back end of it yeah. So as far as connectivity, I mean it is a 5g device. You know which, admittedly, is still in the rollout phase in the U. S.

right, so we do have millimeter, wave and sub six. Otherwise, you know if you don't have uh 5g connectivity, it is compatible with 4g LTE, no problem or Wi-Fi. You know we got Wi-Fi, it's a Wi-Fi six certified devices, so very, very good speeds um. You know it's probably not going to come through because, unfortunately I didn't hook, it hooks anything into this, but we do have an app built into the phone that you see right now, I'm on I'm on 4g, but it'll tell you where the signal is coming from, so you can orient the device a little this way or a little that way to get that best connectivity and is it'll. Give you a real-time readout of your connectivity speed now.

The other thing internal hardware I do want to call it too, is there are 360 degree antennas. So it's really not an issue any more of you know how you hold it to block the antennas or anything like that kind of wherever you position it. You know the device is very good at picking up a network signal and Darren you, you already put that to the paces. I would say better than anyone being out there running around no matter, no matter what I mean, I would venture to say Jason. If, if you were to have connectivity issues, YouTubers are going to be a little more understanding right.

People in the comment- I don't know, the comments section- gets pretty wild on YouTube, but Darren I mean this is something where, if you're having connectivity issues- and you got the world's top golfer out there on the fairway- and you got people probably in your ear on your phone yeah, no room for error right, I mean you, you can't miss, and you can't get bogged down being a technician uh when you're supposed to be a photographer- and you know if this is the final round of the US open if it's the winning putt. If it's uh match championship point at U. S. , open tennis, whatever it may be, people are going to be clamoring for those images, especially in this day and age websites, social media channels, everything they're going to want those right now, and I'm not going to have time or the inclination to have to fiddle around with everything to try and get an image out. I want to know that it's going um, no matter where I am and the know- and I don't want to miss the next picture- that I need to be getting to um.

I remember, years and years ago, when we first started transmitting wirelessly. We had all these weird setups with you know, a MFI system and then another wireless router. We had three different boxes in our belt packs and every time something went wrong. You had three or four different places you needed to go to troubleshoot. Logically, okay, is it this? Now is it this? Now is this, and by the time you turned around, you know you're the golfer you're supposed to be following and played three holes already.

You need to go catch up um, and now you don't have to worry about that. You just plug the device right into the alpha, uh USB connection, for example, and how it goes uh right through the phone and with some of the apps that Sony has the transfer and tagging app. For example, you can apply metadata right to those images before you send them, so you don't have to worry about having an editor on the back end, uh, applying the essential metadata in the camera. You can load an IPC or caption template and have that apply to your images before you send them, so it's all integrated, and it all is about making the workflow as seamless as it can get now. There are two things I wanted to ask you about on this Darren and Ben.

You can jump in with the uh with the tech assist here, because, of course, you know I'm going to want to hear about the tech stuff behind it, but I'm going to go out on a limb down and say: there 's's a lot of gear that gets slung around um photojournalists sports, photographers you're, in a rush you're. Probably the top thing of your concern is not gingerly, placing your Xperia pro back in your pocket correct. I want to talk about the durability and I can't imagine when you're out on the links, there's too many uh plug-in stations, there are no outlets out there for plugging in your phone. So I want to talk here about the battery life and the durability of this camera. Okay.

Well, the unit that I received in November was a pre-production unit, so I don't want to your know, go off and say, but I will tell you I spent what did we spend? We were out at 6 30 in the morning on the water, and we came in at 11 o'clock. In the morning it was constantly on it was plugged into an alpha 7 s3, with a HDMI cable being used as an external monitor, and it was uh also connected with an USB cable to the alpha 7s3 to ingest files and continuously transmit them over ftp, and I think I went and checked my server when I got back, and I had transmitted 1800 pictures um, but in that four and a half hour period constantly hooked up constantly being used as an external monitor and constantly ftping images over 5g network. I still had 20 battery left when we came into the dock wow so that that's what I can tell you about that um. As far as ruggedness I mean I, this feels like it can handle just about anything um. So I'm not really worried about that.

It definitely isn't a delicate flower when you pick it up, you know it. You know, you've got something so yeah now Ben. This is where you swoop in you tell me how many Williams per hour and what kind of glass it's constructed of the screen yeah. So you know the battery on that on the Xperia pro is a 4 000 William hour battery life on it uh. You know it is a.

You know: a metal backing on the construction, exactly what that is. I don't have it for you, but you are looking at a much more durable device and just for instance, I've got my origin, my Xperia one mark ii in a case next to it- and I would uh bet you a bottom dollar here- that this thing is more durable without the case um now, even though it's very durable, in that case the uh, I'm sorry the backing on it. The device was designed with to be not only durable but also have good network connectivity through that material as well. So it all kind of goes hands in hand um. But you know, as far as dust and moisture resistant you are looking at uh ip68, ip65 68 resistance.

So you know official uh, moisture resistance, um, you know we don't want you to necessarily submerge it right. That's a bad idea um, but you know it's really meant for you know the case of you know. Jason and Vivian are out there streaming, and it starts raining. NAD you'll be okay, you know what I mean. Obviously you want to cover the HDMI ports and that kind of thing, but um, you know very, very durable.

You know like Daryl was saying battery life is great. Does support standard USB power delivery too? So, if you just need to you know plug it into a battery, you know charger and top it off real quick. You know you do have rapid charging for it as well, so really designed for um any kind of scenario for sure, Jason and limy. I want to kick it back to you guys, and you know I always love hearing about. What's the first thing that jumps out, I think first impressions are huge, especially with a product like this, that just does so much when you first got your hands on it and Vivian.

I'm going to go to you on this because I know for a fact that you did not. Let Jason touch this thing until you probably had your full run of it. What's the first thing that stood out to you with this device, I think the first thing right when I got it out of the box. I was like this is a really sturdy device like I took it out. It has a good huff to it.

Um not like it's like heavy or anything like that, but it felt really sturdy, and I was just like this- is like a phone. I was kind of like wow. This is really amazing, and I thought like hey like this- could be. This feels like a piece of gear like a piece of gear that we essentially are able to add to like our collection, Jason's covering my face. Sorry, the face autofocus was kicking in on the s3, so I had to like to block our face, so you guys can see the device, but that's initially like my first thought and then when I booted it up, and I turned on the camera, and then I was like really playing with it.

You know I was like hey. This is like really functional, everything's kind of laid out very easy and for me like it, was really easy to figure out, especially with like new technology. I'm always like, oh like. Where are the settings? What am I supposed to be looking for and things like that and then once I got it, then I showed Jason. I was like hey.

This is the phone, and he's like hey it's very sleek. The design of it itself is like sleek, and I just thought you know like. I wouldn't feel afraid to have this like in our bags or like in anything like you know, like Darren mentioned, like it's not like a precious flower like there are many times I'll, get things, and I'm like. Oh no, I don't want to drop it. I don't have to like to wrap it in like a case and a protective thing, but this felt very like okay, like this is just something I'm going to throw in my bag, I'm just gonna start using it.

I don't have to worry about it like scratching it or freaking out, or anything like that, which you know for us, we're very careful with our things, um, or I like to say we're very careful with them um, but I didn't really feel like sort of that need to like worry about it. When I, when I first had a hand at it, Jason was that the first thing that jumped out to you or are you were you straight to the camera straight to the 4k? Monitor I mean you, you already knew you already know you already know. I mean like streams within 30 seconds. You turned it on right away. Yeah, I was just like yes, this is awesome.

I mean, like I said from the beginning. I mean like one day when Sony approaches with it, and then we're just kind of playing with it, we're just like wow, I mean I'm just thinking about the twitch community. Furthermore, I'm just like this is gonna, be huge. You know, and for me personally, I'm just like hey, there's, there's some there's something else about this for YouTube creators as well. I think I just feel like the live community on YouTube could be.

You know a little more explosive. You know, you know, I think maybe will be one of the'll kick it off. First hybrid shooters, to help you know put that into overdrive for YouTube. So the moment you first got that like after I gave it back to you, and I was like hey. This looks really cool it's cute when she thinks she played with this first but secretly.

I've already touched. I picked up the package, and I was like this looks so good. Furthermore, I remember right immediately. You like to set it up on the camera, and you're like running around our place like just plugging it in shoving the camera. In my face, like hey, look at this how's, this look, and I'm like okay, Eddie anytime, we have something new to play with I'm just going to walk into her room, and I'm just like pointing the camera.

I'm just like look at the skin tone. Oh, look at this wow, that's clear! It's you know, and it's crazy clear how the display is, I mean we're talking about. You know, 4k OLED display, I believe, and it's just the colors and everything it's just amazing off of this. You know 5g device, slash pocket external, monitor, it's its! It's amazing yeah! I mean for anybody. Who's never shot with an external monitor.

It's like well, the LCD is good enough. It's really not if you've never shot to an external monitor. You really don't know what you're missing and once you shoot with one. I think that's a huge benefit to the uh. You know the Xperia pro is that it's you know you don't have to commit to buying an external monitor because a lot of people are like.

Well, I'm not going to drop all this money on just an external monitor that I might use here or there sporadically. It's like. You have a device, that's like well, I can use this to uh. I can text Jason and Vivian. I can go on Instagram and then I can.

Furthermore, I can use it as a monitor later. So it's just that versatility. Now Ben, we did have a question come in from Danny joining us here on zoom uh, advising on an adapter to connect it to his alpha 7r4 uh. So I want you to talk about the connectivity options yeah, so uh. It depends on what Danny's looking for I mean the to connect to the camera itself.

You know we're looking at a HDMI connection, so it's micro HDMI into the Xperia and whatever you have on your camera. So in the case of the r4 it would be. You know, micro, HDMI, to micro, HDMI um. In the case, if you want to use uh ftp the ftp functionality, hardwired from alpha um, it's going to be dependent on the model um, but you know we'd be looking at as a straight USB connection USB to USB. You know the case like the alpha one, the a7s three et cetera.

You know it's just an USB c cable to connect the two of them now to make that all kind of uh magic right, there's um, you know all kinds of different uh like cages that you could get for your camera and then, so a lot of folks would say, get that cage, and then you get a little um clamp, and you know that you can then clamp the phone onto and see there we go. I called it a phone plant, the opera- I don't know you know what I mean. We need to catch a catchy name. We do yeah. You know.

Communication device right now is kind of where we're at but anyways, so you'd essentially plug the Xperia onto a clamp onto the cage and then feed the HDMI cable into the alpha or, whichever camera you're going to be using this on, that's probably the most common way. I think you're going to use it. Obviously, if you've got a bigger camera, maybe you've got some kind of different like a magic arm or something that you could hook into it, but yeah anywhere. You could mount that camera on there so um, and we'll talk a little about this at the end Eric. But you know, b h has some great kits um like a whole, mounting kit that you can get with the Xperia pro absolutely now kind of playing off that.

What do you need to get going? I mean. Is this something where it sounds, like Jason didn't, even have it out of the box fully he was already streaming. So is this something? Is this just like a plug and play Darren? You talked about not needing you know, you don't want to have an uh, a degree in astrophysics to work a device. I mean how what was your guys? Experience like taking this out of the box setting it up, you know for the people who don't want to commit a month to learning a new device. First, I have to echo what Vivian said too.

When I first took this out of the box, I was like whoa. This is. This is a piece of gear. This is not a phone. This is not a toy.

This is a piece of gear. It feels like it looks like it. You are absolutely right about the external monitor I never ever shot with external monitors before, but just I know this wasn't your question, but I have to just talk about this um. First, being able to pinch and zoom on it to see. Sharpness is remarkable if you're shooting a portrait or something like that, but also the fact that you can have this and turn it around.

So your subject can see themselves uh. If I'm shooting an athlete, that's got a particular pose that they wanted to say a yoga instructor or something where they're very particular about this hand needs to be over here. This knee needs to be turned this way. They can see themselves and I don't have to set up a giant laptop or anything like that. I can just turn this around on the cage, and they can see themselves, and they can see exactly what I'm shooting.

So that's a huge help too, but in terms of setting up uh Sony has imaging edge mobile software, and they have the transfer and tagging app that you just you know, go to the Google Play Store and you download it onto your device uh, and then it's an USB cable just right in, and you just set up your phone for USB tethering uh in the settings, and you then need a ftp server, but in transfer and tagging you can then go in, and you can input your login information. Your ftp address everything and once that image goes in, you can set it to either hold it and then transmit it manually or you can set it to just feed it, and then you're, basically streaming um your images. You know same as a video stream, almost you're just streaming your images right now, uh. It doesn't take long at all and trust me if I can set it up, anyways. Okay, this is uh yeah, I'm not a digit tech, I'm you know nothing of the kind um so yeah it.

It's pretty darn easy. I think it's a great real perspective, Darren, it's like and that's why we love to hear where not everybody is a somebody who's, a tech reviewer, and they talk to the rest of us out here. Like I'm pretty much the same way. I know what I need to do. I know how to turn devices on and get the product out to do what I needed to do, but I don't know how to go in depth to get the full benefits of it.

Jason and Vivian. You guys are like miles ahead um. So it's nice to see that guys like Darren, and I can turn on something like this and get something out of it, but was that the same experience you guys had? Did you guys? I know you dug deep. What was your guy's experience on just the usability of it right out of the box uh? I just want to quickly comment. I mean like wow, wow.

We seem like experts. Believe me, I'm just like I caveman a lot of my stuff too. I'm just like how do you know. This is why it takes him like an hour to set up for things. Sometimes yeah, I don't it's not that he's particular he's figuring it out yeah, but I mean, like you know like I just want to reflect off of jarred said.

You know, I think you know for me myself, um a lot of this. You know we learn with what we're doing we learn with the trade, and you know for me. I want to say a lot of this is like really new to me too, as well, so for me to also like to pull it out and be like. Okay, I know which cord goes into here and then like set it up. All I have to do is just mount it.

I thought that was really, really intuitive for myself, and essentially we just like got it out of the box took them out put that on, and then I'm like. Okay, well, there's a cord. I think I know where this goes, and I just like plugged it in, and then we were able to like start shooting right away and when we talk about what we need, you know for us when we're doing like streams and things like that. All we really need is just this device and our cameras and our a-game. Yes, so I know we were talking about usability and I think uh.

This is something that we didn't. We haven't really touched up on, especially, but maybe someone's question may be like well how? How does this you know? How does the camera how's? How does the device recognize a camera like this when we have uh HDMI there are. You know, I'm so glad that YouTube. The YouTube app itself are able to recognize like another source of camera. You know when you click on the flippy.

You know you flip the front camera you flip to the three, the y the ultra-wide, and then you flips to the device itself. Furthermore, you know the alpha camera that we're using, which is pretty cool. I know for fact right now. I don't think the twitch app can do it, but people who people who've done twitch streaming labs. A third-party app allows you to cycle through that, and you know they just make it easy.

So definitely look out for these apps that allow you to cycle through a different camera source to be able to use um. These happened to that to tap into the camera that you know the fancy cameras that we love to use. You know it's crazy to me how normally, when you see uh products marketed it's clearly professional consumer, there's very little. That goes either way or it's for content creators, but it doesn't really work for professionals like who are professionals in a different genre like Darren, where Darren might have a different set of criteria that he's looking at this looks like it goes across the board, um and Ben correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like Sony, was really like all right. It doesn't matter if you're, the on-the-fly YouTuber, who needs to stream constantly or the photographer like Darren who's like I got sports, illustrated waiting in the wings for 2000 images of this putt yeah.

Sorry about that, my uh connection cut out just for just it's the zoom life we're used to it. I know right um, good thing. My experience has a hot spot because it saved you again. That was not planned. No! No! So yes, dark! I think you nailed it right.

So it's its! Really. This wide range of users, you know anywhere from you, know, YouTube and you know to sports photography like you're saying it's just it's a huge spectrum. You know and um it's its it's hard to pin down, because there's this huge democratization now of content creation. You know at one point it would just be. You know: here's your broadcast, people, here's yours, stills people, and you know now with social media and everything else.

It's everybody does everything you know and that's really where, where this device can do it- and I do want to circle back to um- forgive me this may have touched when we dropped out, but you know we talked very little. I think about the external monitor aspect and uh. You know I know Darren was discussing this uh. It really is uh, something special I mean it is HDR. It'll accept a HDR input as well.

You know it's 4k OLED, which is better than my TV at home. It looks really nice, you know and there's a lot of lower quality external monitors in the market that are still really expensive, but you know if you look at it, Xperia will do all of that. You know it'll do that that streaming, but also do that external monitor, and you know, change some habits on how you shoot and everything um so yeah, it's really something that that bridges, multiple user camps right. So it lets you do multiple things at once, uh, which, which I think is great much. How like alpha, does really great stills and really great video.

This is you know, helping you connect all those dots together. Absolutely definitely now that all being said, let's, let's talk promos. Let's talk some deals. What can people uh look to get on the uh, the kits on the exterior pro itself yeah? So you know retail right now on Xperia is uh 24.99. You know, but right now, b h has a really great promo with an uh external battery pack for about two hundred normally be two hundred dollars, uh units being included with purchase um, we have a number of uh opera, pro grip solutions.

You know, including a cage, and you know, phone mount and all of this business um pretty much all almost all the accessories you're going to need to get up and going both uh for alpha. Furthermore, you know like one. If you look on your website, you've got some that are dedicated just for alpha and some that are not so. You really got some choices there um, so you can buy that whole grip solution. It's about 175 dollars worth of accessories, uh all included for free with that purchase of the opera, and then you're.

Also looking like I, you know, I think you, your guy's team has really gone above and beyond. You even included the cameras in some of these kits now, that's not for free, of course, but you know you're getting when you buy the camera and the opera, you know you can get it all, bundled together with the appropriate mounting hardware. That mounting hardware is the free part there. So uh really, really great promo. I mean you're looking at 200 in accessories that, roughly speaking, 175 excuse me that are going to get you up and up and running, uh and ready to broadcast.

Absolutely wonderful. Thank you for those promos, like I said earlier, we'll get that information dropped in, so it'll be clickable for you guys to go right to the site and take a look at some of these great options with the Xperia pro as we get ready to wrap it up here. I just want to get some last impressions on this, so Darren, we'll start with you. Where do you see this taking your workflow in the future? I see it being an absolutely essential part of it. It's going to be just like having one of my cameras, I mean I'm, not I'm not going to go out without it.

You know I've got you know. I've got three zooms. I've got a hundred two. Eight I've got three camera bodies that I never go out on. The golf course without and I'm never going to go out on the golf course without this too, because this is how I am going to get my files back in now.

Um, it's yeah, it's! It is going to become an essential piece of equip uh for me, and I can't say that about any other device. Like this, you know I don't keep a might with me all the time uh, because they're so unreliable and the service is so spotty, and you know 4g is slow um, but this is something that's going to be with me: the whole time yeah. So it's definitely a permanent addition to my kit, yeah and minimizing your kit. I think, helps as well right. You want to be as mobile as possible, not yeah loading yourself down yeah.

You know I don't want to have five different things that I need to pack, in my case, if I know that I need to transmit remotely, and now we've whittled it down to one solid device and that's it so brilliant yeah and Jason and Vivian. Furthermore, you guys have mentioned multiple times like twitch and really the abilities to just take things on the go with this. Where do you see this fitting into the gamer community, the YouTubers, all the content streamers out there? Where can this device take their game to another level? I think this is perfect. I think it's really just unlocking there's a lot of potential now and I think, there's a huge shift in essentially how social media is like working and transforming, especially you know with people being at home and things like that, and I think it just opens up a possibility. Furthermore, I know for us to innovate and think a little out of the box and like how can we connect with our audience more on a different level um than before? You know, rather than just like a video or something like that, but how can we be more interactive? How can we engage with them more, and I know for us like, because we love traveling we like going out and about it just opens up different options rather than for us to just sit in front of like our desk all the time.

You know, I think you know just like with the stream we did this morning, like we never thought we can go and sit in front of like our favorite coffee shop and just like talk to people in high quality yeah for like 30 minutes without us saying like. Can you hear us like are the sounds weird? Is it it was? It was so clear that a crow that was like bothering us it was just picking, and I was like, and then people are just like yeah we hear the quotes. It was crystal clear yeah, so I think it's just a very innovative way. I will say I was particularly paying attention to the comments that that's like the ultimate when you go on YouTube and watch any video. It's like the comments are where all the fun is at.

You want to see like what people are saying, and there were so many comments about the audio clarity and the quality of the video, and I think that speaks volumes because it wasn't like you guys. I could tell by the setup it wasn't like you guys had like a 20-person crew out there, and you set up the perfect location is like you, guys literally, were just like screw it. We're going to go where we want to go, and we're going to make this thing work, and it looked beautiful, and I think that's part of the beauty of what we've been talking about for this last hour or so is the versatility where you don't want to have to be saddled all the time. Can you be saddled with gear? Yes, can you always, you know get thing, you know, make the preparations to get high quality? Yes, but there's a lot of people out there that are lazy, not going to say any names, but there's lazy people out there who you're you need. You demand the utmost quality and I think this is what uh the Xperia pro delivers better than a lot of what's out there, and it does it all in one package which nothing out there does so Ben.

I think the only way to describe it. I've decided is a master of all trades perfect. There we go we're running with, I think, we're thinking about the marketing department. There we go, I should get into marketing. So I definitely with this face for radio and these uh, these marketing quips.

I think I'm going to take my show elsewhere, but you guys have been awesome. Um Ben Darren, Vivian and Jason pleasure to have you guys on for the first time pleasure to have you guys back. It's been just great hearing about your experiences with such a powerful piece of equipment that clearly is going to change the way that we create on the fly so huge. Thank you to all of you guys uh Sony for sponsoring this event. This is just a wonderful chance to get to know this product and to all of our viewers.

Thank you for your questions. Thank you for tuning in. If you do have any further questions on this, the b h superstore is open. You can go on the internet, you can call in. We do have our experts available to answer all your questions about this so from the b, h, virtual event, space team and the people at Sony, in addition to our wonderful creators here, I'm dark thank you for watching.

Source : B&H Photo Video