Fun Radio captures excitement from all angles at Ibiza Experience. Sony’s FR7 full-frame PTZ camera gives French broadcaster greater freedom to capture very high-quality images in space-constrained situations where using a larger camera with its operator is impractical.
   

“The FR7 is a small format camera that offers us large camera image quality” – said Julien Faustino Multicam Director, Fun Radio Ibiza Experience

Part of the RTL Group, Fun Radio broadcasts a range of dance music stations to French fans. Fun Radio’s ‘Ibiza Experience’ is a series of annual concerts that bring the sounds and top DJs from the famous party island to a live audience in Paris.

For this year’s 2023 event – seventh in the popular series – Fun Radio used Sony’s VENICE, VENICE 2, FX6 and FR7 Cinema Line cameras to capture the action at the Accor Arena.

Farid Kounda of AV specialists NoMad Productions is emphatic in his choice of cameras to cover the live event: “We obviously went to Sony, because in our opinion they’re the only ones who know how to combine cinematographic image quality with the best of broadcast camera technology.”

The event’s star performer was the Sony FR7 PTZ (Pan Tilt Zoom) camera. Packing cinematic full-frame image quality into a compact robotically controlled package, the FR7 can be situated wherever it’s needed. As Julien Faustino, Multicam Director of Fun Radio’s Ibiza Experience explains: “When you’re working live in a public venue, you need to find tricks to place the cameras intelligently.”

Unlike other PTZ cameras the FR7 is also capable of operating with interchangeable motorised lenses, giving broadcasters and event producers even more artistic freedom to shoot thrilling cinematic images in virtually any situation.

“In a way the FR7 replaces PTZ cameras with small sensors” explains Albrecht Gerlach, CEO of multi-camera specialist provider PhotoCineLive. “We have the best of both worlds: with the large sensor, and also flexibility to place the camera where you couldn’t easily position a operator – for example on stage or on a single-operator crane.”

As Farid Kounda confirms, the image quality and flexibility of the full-frame FR7 made it the ideal partner for this challenging live assignment: “Being able to fit an FR7 into our workflow gives us the benefits of this large sensor, for superb sensitivity that lets us create dynamic images with this small camera.”

“We work a lot with VENICE and other Sony cameras” adds Lucien Peron, head of video equipment at PhotoCineLive. “The FR7 is a game-changer, because it allows us to deal with tight space constraints while remaining within our Sony camera ecosystem.”