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Red vs Sony F900

Radim Schreiber

Radim Schreiber

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Has anyone done or seen resolution comparison tests with either Sony Cinealta F900R or Panasonic HPX-3000? I've been looking for these for a month now and I cannot find anything.

Everyone assumes that Red is superior because it does 4k and has larger chip, but people forget that Red has only one chip and lots of color information has to be interpolated.

Comparison for noise to signal ratio would be also useful to see, but there I think RED has greater advantage due to chip size.

Thanks
Radim
 
skotak said:
Has anyone done or seen resolution comparison tests with either Sony Cinealta F900R or Panasonic HPX-3000? I've been looking for these for a month now and I cannot find anything.

Everyone assumes that Red is superior because it does 4k and has larger chip, but people forget that Red has only one chip and lots of color information has to be interpolated.

Comparison for noise to signal ratio would be also useful to see, but there I think RED has greater advantage due to chip size.

Thanks
Radim
Click to expand...

Apples and oranges.

If you do a comparison, remember that the F900 has built in "processing". You get a little sharpening and a slight curve right out of the camera. This "curve" adds contrast. Contrast can appear to make something look "sharper".

A "flat" image right of the camera in RED needs to have that processing done to it for any kind of comparison to begin.

Everyone "processes" the footage differently, therefore there is no "standard" for results.
 
skotak said:
...but people forget that Red has only one chip and lots of color information has to be interpolated.

Comparison for noise to signal ratio would be also useful to see, but there I think RED has greater advantage due to chip size.
Click to expand...

You should forget pondering the geek tech issues. Just put the cameras side by side and do a test, if you need to, and work out which gives you the images that you want to look at.
Somehow I think you'll find it's the Red.
 
Try looking at the frames on cinematography.net

I believe that you'll see that Red has higher resolution and that color performance is pretty similar. The 3-chip cameras do exhibit color artifacts too (I'm not sure if it's the prism that causes it, or the effect of the prism on the lens design; cheap lenses will also cause color artifacts). e.g. on black & white sections of a test chart, you will see color that shouldn't be there.

Resolution-wise, Red should be the winner. You can read smaller text and see details like the tiny hairs on people's skin.
Sharpness-wise, the F900 will likely look sharper out of the box due to edge enhancement. (For workflow reasons that might be a good thing???)

Out of the box, the F900 should apply a knee algorithm to the image that rolls off the highlights. This will make it appear like the camera has more detail in the highlights. It also increases noise.
With Red, you can simulate this by messing around with the curves in Redcine/Red Alert. A simple curves approach will desaturate highlight. The algorithm in the F900 does something to add saturation back into the highlights. If you are shooting concert lighting, saturated colors may look really weird (or watch UFC... saturated lighting looks weird on whatever camera they are shooting with). I don't know if the menus allow you to turn that off (they probably do).
The Red image may appear to have extremely low noise because it isn't applying a knee algorithm by default. (I believe it still has lower noise if you take that into account... though I'm not 100% sure.)

The F900 also probably records inform in the superwhite/illegal values. If you map these into the legal range, you avoid unnecessarily throwing away dynamic range.

Just put the cameras side by side and do a test
Click to expand...
That's not a bad idea...
 
I've worked in post on more F900-shot TV movies than I can count, so I'm very familiar with the look. Recently, the post house where I work shot 2 shows on RED, I've gone into the edit suites to check them out. The difference is obvious. Far superior colors, far superior detail, much less noise.... there's no contest. The RED looks like a movie. The F900 looks like TV. The only hitch is the workflow -- much slower than tape.
 
REDneck said:
The RED looks like a movie. The F900 looks like TV. The only hitch is the workflow -- much slower than tape.
Click to expand...

there is lots of minor reasons to argue with the above... but it does sum up perfectly (and better than I could).

like it

Michael Lindsay
 
Shooting 4k on RED One, measured luma resolution >3.2k. Measured chroma resolution 2k. In both cases, greater or significantly greater than F900 measured resolution < 1.92k.

Graeme
 
Daniel Reichenbach said:
If you've shot with a RED you will never shoot again with a F900
Click to expand...

Depens... on your production needs...

If you have to be ENG/Documentry style F900 is still better to go... :innocent:

My 2 cents.

Patrick


Daniel, if you have another mountain snow film to do and you need arms and eyes give me a call!:cold:
 
I think graeme was being kind saying <1.92 and not saying how much less ...
 
It has a HD-SDI output? (1920x1080)
 
Charles Angus said:
I can't really see how, if you're recording to HDCAM. Doesn't follow, does it...
Click to expand...

No and if we are talking about co-sited RGB surely using the camera as a camcorder you are getting far less.

I've shot many times with F900 or 750s. It is an easy way of working and for some jobs you just need easy.

I did a very quick test with an F23 and I have to say that if they could have reduce the size to that of an old F900 (at half the current F23 price) about 3 years ago?? Things could have been very different for Sony.

ahh well!!

Michael L

PS

Stuart English said:
Yeah but what would you record it to ?
Click to expand...

I did a job with a 750 (baby to the F900) recording 25p to a 5500 Sr deck in a studio. I controlled contrast tightly and took the Knee out of the camera and recorded the best picture I've ever had out of Sony kit.
 
I used both and have footage from both. There is simply no comparison. Red produces much sharper image with more colour information and less noise.
 
The F900 have held up against time pretty good. It's how much? 7-8 years old technology, but newer cams are getting better all the time.
 
Daniel Reichenbach said:
If you've shot with a RED you will never shoot again with a F900
Click to expand...

If you're a professional, you'll shoot with whatever is appropriate for the particular job at hand, considering all of its needs - size, weight, convenience, required deliverables, post production requirements (both in terms of cost and time), crew experience, producer's requests, and, yes, desired look - all of these things contribute to a choice of shooting format. Cost might also be a consideration, but on many professional projects it's not the overriding one. There is no one format that is "perfect for everything." Not even film, and not even Red.
 
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