The folks at AbelCine have put the prosumer Sony FS100 through the same tests to which they subjected its professional cousin, the Sony F3, and have discovered some interesting things. First of all, it seems the FS100 gets about 10 stops of dynamic range as opposed to the F3's 12 stops. But the FS100 has higher sensitivity settings, which let it reach the equivalent of an astounding 16,000 ISO. Here's the chart that AbelCine came up with, to translate Sony's video-centric "db gain" settings to the filmic ISO rating to which many are more accustomed:


Gain db LevelISO Rating
0 db500 ISO
+3 db800 ISO
+6 db1000 ISO
+9 db1600 ISO
+12 db2000 ISO
+15 db3200 ISO
+18 db4000 ISO
+21 db6400 ISO
+24 db8000 ISO
+27 db12800 ISO
+30 db16000 ISO

To summarize, AbelCine's Andy Shipsides states, "we were amazed by the results, especially the ISO 8000 and 16000 results. My light meter couldn’t even go above 8000." Click through to Abel's full post for frame grabs from the high ISO footage.

Link: Sony FS100 Ratings and Dynamic Range - AbelCine