Rami Ravasio's entry into the world of filmmaking begins like many others: 'You get an injury skateboarding' he recalls 'so you are sitting around watching your friends, and there is a camera you pick up so you can stay involved. That is pretty much how I got into it.' Living and working in Switzerland, Rami calls the mountains his home, working with athletes, outdoor brands, and tourism centres on video projects that all have a focus on outdoor sports, primarily skiing and mountaineering.

Rami has recently worked on two projects shot with the Sony FX30 and FX3 cinema cameras. With his usual camera being the much larger Sony FX6, there were some immediate benefits to shooting with the smaller and lighter FX3 and FX30 cameras, both of which share the same size and format body but with different size sensors - full frame and APS-C size, respectively.

'Obviously, one of the first benefits is that they are small enough to throw into a bag, take it out at any time, and start shooting. You can even clip it to a capture clip you put on your backpack, so it is always there when you are climbing, hiking or skiing. They are just quick and efficient.'

To test the FX3, Rami shot a short film in Kyrgyzstan, where he had been co-hosting a photography workshop. 'It's a very special country to me; the people, the culture, the vastness of the landscape. It is so different from Europe and my home country Switzerland. I want to capture this mixture of mountains and high-altitude prairie landscapes. It is so vast that it is hard to get a grasp on distances even when you are there.'

All of the footage for the Kyrgyzstan video was shot with the FE 24-70mm f/2.8 GM II lens and the FE 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 GM OSS for the long shots. 'We had to travel pretty lightweight, so the 24-70mm was perfect. It's one lens that can do almost anything and is incredibly sharp. I wanted to highlight these great features in the video and showcase what they can achieve for both personal and commercial video shoots.' Rami's skill shows us that you don't need a lot of equipment to tell a story. 'I want to tell a story that people can relate to, even if it is in a challenging environment like the mountains. The people have the same problems in their everyday lives, just set in a different environment. In a sense, I want to create something that is relatable.’ With just a basic kit, Rami needed to rely on the technology in the FX3 to help him capture the footage regardless of the conditions. 'One of my favourite things is the dual native ISO sensitivity. Being able to shoot at ISO 12,800 and have the footage come out so clean opens up many opportunities to shoot. We could only shoot in natural light in the evenings, and the conditions constantly changed.'

One of his favourite shots in the film was of an eagle hunter. 'He is on his horse with the eagle, and you have this incredible colour palette of the desert landscape. In the distance is a lake and these huge mountains. The shot encapsulates so much about the location, and it is always the scene that I remember.'

From the desert heights, the snow-peaked Swiss Alps provided a different backdrop for Rami's video shot with the FX30. 'I wanted to do something with paragliding and skiing. It was a fun opportunity to test the camera on home terrain.'

Most of the footage with the FX30 was shot handheld, using the in-built active stabilisation or by mounting the camera on a gimbal. This made it quick and easy for Rami to film the athletes featured in the video. ‘As well as the 24-70mm, I also used the FE 16-35mm f/2.8 GM for the skiing shots’, says Rami. ‘There was a need to have a lot of flexibility to capture the athletes and the incredible scenery. I love shooting with fixed focal length lenses, but when you are in the mountains and need to decide on the lenses you take, it often comes down to flexibility and versatility in the most compact form you can get.’

‘There is a shot at the start where we see the skier walk out into an ocean of clouds, with the mountain peaks poking through as the sun comes up. That is my favourite shot taken with the FX30. Everything was uncertain up to that point - we didn’t know what the conditions would be like, and we got super lucky with the cloud inversion and the light on the mountain.’