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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

New Sony F3 Footage

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Indeed. I can see it hanging around. Definitely a good buy for those who have pre-existing Sony packages and need to push things up a notch. I suspect it will get a good foothold in the adult entertainment industry and film schools.
 
I'd say is very good actually, very, very good. If what you want out of an S35 sensor is the ability to use shallow and selective depth of field and to rack focus between different image planes ad nauseum, then this camera can deliver in spades. Keeping in mind that most of the user selectable tweaks were not available to the DP, the results are all the more impressive.
 
I agree the pictures look nice. They were shot by excellent DP's using expensive glass and were posted at a very high end shop in London. However, the F3 is still a Sony EX3 with a 35mm sensor....records at 35mb/s which is nuts! If they had made this at the very least 50 mb/s then it would have made the grade for BBC HD. Also the price at £18K is 5 times the cost of the Panasonic Af-AG101 which offers almost identical performance. That said, somebody see's this baby selling in big numbers - UK dealer CVP has just ordered 100 F3's....just don't see why anyone would buy this over an Epic or S35 Scarlet once they ship!

Sony should be charging about £6K for the F3.....

Interestingly the BBC are replacing all their Sony Z1's with Canon XF305's which they recently fully qualified for HD acquisition.

Best wishes

Scott
 
It looks very good but on Vimeo you are not allowed to download at full 1080p and then see it better what is going on there.

But Panasonic AF101 and GH2 are getting pretty close to that quality even with their higher compression AVCHD codec

just for a fraction of Sony F3 camera price.

What does it mean?

It means that RED have to ship Scarlet S35 as soon as possible and show its full advantage in resolution, color rendering,

in camera RAW recording, ergonomics, portability, lightweight, post workflow and of course lower price that Sony F3.

That early Scarlet S35mm launch gives enough time to tune EPIC as a perfect cine digital/still camera that can equally compete with film acquisition only.
 
Sanjic

You are right, the pressure is really on for RED to get Scarlet out ASAP as the competition is seriously hotting up. The Panasonic AF-AG101 ships mid December and many budget shooters are going to buy this because it's a great little camera and it is available. There can be no doubt that RED need to get production ramped up as quickly as possible or sales will be impacted...Scarlet may be the better camera but until it's shipping that's a mute point.

Epic...don't see this as urgent as Scarlet. The MX Red is already more than a match for Alexa/ F35 etc. It's the lower cost volume 35mm camera market that is exploding right now.

Scott
 
OK, it's obviously capable of making really beautiful pictures. I don't believe "expensive" glass makes that much difference and we're all "excellent" DPs, right? :)

Pros:
It's less expensive than Red.
LCD & EVF built-in.
I doubt Sony will EOL essential components such as media.
Accessories will not be on back-order for long periods.
Software is likely to be highly refined before the camera is released.

Cons:
It's much more expensive than the AF100.
LCD & EVF built-in; can't put them where you want them.
Far below Red in resolution.
Does not have Red's range of frame-rates.
Stills from motion not in the same league as Red.

Sony will sell a lot of these cameras, but one must consider the total cost of a shooting package with lenses, power, support, etc. How much cheaper is the Sony compared to an Epic package? Is it enough to settle for second best? For those shooting with stills camera lenses, the answer is more likely to be yes; for those with expensive primes and zooms, less likely.

For owner-operators, the Sony is attractive; I would think much less so for rental houses, where a small difference in rental rates is not a powerful incentive to select a lesser camera.

I'm adding an AF100 to my arsenal, along with my 5D (which I absolutely despise as a motion picture camera), and, of course, our Red One. I'll do Stage 3 to Epic and then decide what to do with the AF100; maybe a B camera, maybe eBay. I'll keep the 5D for my personal stills work and the wild-man clients who demand it even after the thrashing I give them.

Is the Sony in my future? If Epic is everything we believe it to be, why would I buy the Sony? Of course this is just their first shot across Red's bow. The "soon only not yet" company gets around to everything eventually, even if they do occasionally have dramatic failures; remember their NLE systems?

Exciting times.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo
 
Actually, apart from showing us how 35mm optics work at lower stops, I didn't think that looked all that great technically.

Skintones. Lowlights...

But that might be due to vimeo...
 
Just another thought on Scarlet S35; if it's a crippled Epic, without adequate over-cranking, it's got a much smaller market. If it's as capable as Epic, even with somewhat lower resolution, what does that do to Epic's market?

Furthermore, the target is accelerating at a dizzying rate; if Scarlet S35 hits the streets a year or more from now, I expect Sony and Panasonic to have upped their offerings considerably.

I'm glad all I do is make pretty pictures.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo
 
I'm with Gunleik... But I'll reserve judgement until the cameras are more polished and we see more footage other than stuff on Vimeo. Not wild about the motion blur characteristics shown here and there's little point to analyzing that aspect of it anyway from a Vimeo clip of a beta camera.

Nice little short for being cut together from 2 days of test shooting I guess. Also nice to see that Sony is willing to release a lower cost 35mm camera (although still more expensive compared to the AF100 and eventual Scarlet S35). I bet we'll be seeing a lot of these F3 cameras being used over the next couple years.
 
After being befuddled by recent AF100 footage, this Sony F3 footage is a revelation. It's all the characteristics I love about the EX3 in a 35mm format.

Is it worth five times the price of the AF100? Yes, in my opinion. The feel of the footage is absolutely there. It is at least a five times better image.

I've never been a Sony fan but they do continue to impress, charge big prices and live up to the expectations of those prices.
 
One thing great about this camera is that it's another sign of the times. It's just one more choice in the larger sensor market and undoubtedly a direct result of RED pushing the industry in the right direction.

Shooting on the P+S Technik 35mm adapter seems so archaic but in reality was a decent option only a few short years ago.
 
Matthew Bennett said:
It is at least a five times better image.
Click to expand...

Assuming Scarlet S35 hits the streets around the same time as this (February 2011), I don't see how the price for this thing can be justified.

Today, despite the nice sensor, I'd have a hard time justifying anything with a 5 digit price that records to AVCHD.
 
That Footage, looks so fu....ing awesome :party:

do we need Scarlet and Epic enimore? :cool:

happy shooting everybody
 
You know, I like Sony, they make some of the best high-end products out there. However, looking at this footage on my 30" Apple Cinema Display, all I could think was "You know, if Canon had uncompressed HDMI out on their DSLRs, this camera would be instantly DOA."

VDSLRs changed the game considerably and ultimately showed that you can get by with so little these days and after seeing the introductory videos for the Alexa at NAB and comparing that with the, then new, RED MX footage, all the 1080p stuff just seemed to be the same quality-wise.

Now, having said that, after seeing more sneak-peek footage from cameras like the AF100, GH2, and now the F3, I can see that video quality is going up another notch and 1080p, even though it looks pretty good as-is, still isn't enough for that extra "oomph"-factor that RED footage gives with all its extra resolution. My hope is that the Scarlet S35 is released immediately, I feel it just needs to happen at this point just for competition's sake and, ultimately, it would be a much better sale in this economy right now than an EPIC would. Plus, as I've said before, the Scarlet, now, is really just a less-featured EPIC, which is fine, it's like cars, it's basically the base model that doesn't include the fancy speakers and heated seats.:auto:

Getting back to the Sony F3, it's nice, I wouldn't pay that price for it, I'd much rather pick up a used RED One at that point. The video quality and price will probably give the Arri Alexa a run for its money, although, like I said, all it takes is a VDSLR with uncompressed output or an early Scarlet release to take it out.
 
I don't know.. It looks good. Depending on what you're looking for very good. But I think it also lacks a sense of character somehow. Maybe I just need to get used to the look. I like it and I don't like it. Maybe it's the lenses. But for this amount of money, I'd still go the Red route. Even if it only was because of RAW.
 
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