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 Level | ISO Rating |
0 db | 500 ISO |
+3 db | 800 ISO |
+6 db | 1000 ISO |
+9 db | 1600 ISO |
+12 db | 2000 ISO |
+15 db | 3200 ISO |
+18 db | 4000 ISO |
+21 db | 6400 ISO |
+24 db | 8000 ISO |
+27 db | 12800 ISO |
+30 db | 16000 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.