Sony’s F5 professional video camera has been hacked to record 4K XAVC internally. The hack, carried out by cameraman Paul Ream, consists of modifying a line of code in plain text on the camera settings onto the SD card. One of the key differences between the the F5 and its F55 sibling is the latter’s ability to to record internally (the F5 can shoot in 4K, but requires a $5,500 external recorder in order to do so), and this hack seems to negate in some part the $7,000 difference between the the two cameras, although the F55 has some additional features too.

What has upset many Sony owners is that the company appears to have deliberately disabled the 4K option on the F5, in order to increase the commercial viability of the F55. Sony’s commercial manager Peter Crithary has responded to the hack on the Sony forum, by threatening that any modification may void Sony’s warranty. It seems likely that a future firmware update for the camera may remove the ability to perform the hack. (Image from ExtraShot).