AJA Cion Review – All You Need to Know About the AJA Camera

by Sebastian WöberMarch 17^th, 2015

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AJA Cion Review – Ergonomics & Handling

The AJA CION’s design looks very ergonomic. With the included shoulder pad and the convenient ARRI rosette mounts on the sides (for handles) it is quickly transformed into a perfect single operator camera. The Zacuto Gratical Viewfinder with a Wooden Camera UVF mount complemented the CION very well.
PS: The shoulderpad is awesome. With its low weight of 3kg the camera rests comfortably on the shoulder.

Working the menu of the AJA CION was partly intuitive, but mostly unintuitive. It took me some hours and a read through the extensive user manual to fully understand the structure and all settings. It is not a camera you can take out of the box and shoot, like the ARRI Amira or the Blackmagic Cameras.

When shooting with the camera I overestimated the ergonomics and handling. The menu can only be accessed from the side monitor, so it is not possible to operate it from the shoulder. Changing a setting like shutter speed, whitebalance or framerates means taking the camera off the shoulder, because the operator’s head blocks the screen and buttons.
Then it is not easy to find basic settings. To change the shutter I have to enter the “Exposure Index” menu, select “shutterspeed” setting, click, select my desired speed, confirm, select “end”, click. Too many clicks to change any setting on a camera. This can not be done from the hip so it means placing it on a tripod and working through the menu or having an assistant who can do that for me.

Another concern in terms of ergonomics is that the camera took 31 seconds to boot. This was also slowing us down because a framerate change needed a restart on the 2 cameras we tested (most probably a bug that will be addressed by a firmware update soon).

With some user keys for quick access to important settings the camera could have become much more ergonomic, but browsing through the “config” menu with 43 settings, where only 1 display’s at a time, doesn’t allow quick operation on set.

Playback mode is the complete opposite of shooting mode. It is more ergonomic and convenient to use than on any other camera I have used before. No need to switch to playback mode, just press “play” and you get instant playback. There are dedicated keys for all playback operations and an “eject” button that instantly unmounts the media. Playback and media operation is flawless and intuitive, it almost feels analogue.

In terms of operation, once the camera is setup everything works as it should. It has tactile solid buttons and tally lamps in all the right places. There is always a feeling that my shot was securely captured. In this regard the AJA camera worked perfectly too.

Overall the AJA CION was not as easy to use as I expected. In this regard it seems less suited for single operator shooters like me.
There are some ergonomic strong points, like the form factor, mounting points, weight and playback / media operation, but the menu and shooting controls are like a bottleneck and seemed to heavily reduced the possibilities of the CION.

GO TO PAGE 4 → Pro’s & Con’s | Conclusion