Scarlet vs Sony

[Pietro Impagliazzo]

Scarlet vs Sony? That's so 2008!

 

[greg filipkowski]

2008

2008

Well sooner or later they will catch up, look at chevy and ford, at first chevy ford caddy was the jam, now honda toyota etc,
in 2008 there was no Sony PMW-F3

 

[Hugh Scully]

If that's how the Sony renders "available light" skin tones, then it's very impressive. I like the face tones better than most Red footage (which seems to make people look more pale than reality). Whether the Red stuff is intentionally that way, or what, I find the skin tones in the majority of Red footage a bit cold and unappealing. The wild card is that you can manipulate the RAW files, but still. (Sorry I'm no one's fanboy).

I think that it is about how you handle it in post. Book of Eli has that desaturated look and it works beautifully for that film where Informant! has a tangy colorful feel. Waiting for Scarlet, I shot my last two shorts on rented (one borrowed ) Sony EX-1 with adapters and I really like the color too. Especially face tones. The test F3 stuff looks good to me.

However, at $16K no lenses, you could put together a pretty nice S35 rig. That is a way better deal for me. I have to admit that the AF-100 is distracting. That's a pretty good price point for an interim camera while things shake out with the S35 but the F3 is just too high to consider in place of the S35.

 

[paolo baroni]

i'm really waitin for scarlet!
i've seen af100 this week and it sucks, very noisy
i've tested it in 10 minutes so not a big experience but the footage it's really worse then a hpx170.....and 6000 euros for an avchd camera it's crazy...
mytest on http://vimeo.com/17005039
sony it's good, the sensor it's the catch up! but then you have a 15000$ camera with 4.2.0 on expresscard is it worth buying?!?!?!
sony and pana say that every camera is good with sdi out but how many times i can film with a deck with me??? for sure not every job....
i think i'm gonna give a shot to the new redrock m3, i have a m2 and it's almost fine with hpx171
i worked with a 4ksensor red 4 times and the matters are always the same, aside the 4k frame, the bitrate, low noise and latitude of the red-redcode kickass!!
scarlet come to me

 

[Lee Saxon]

Why am I sensing more excitement about 4:2:0 35Mb/s from Sony than 4:2:2 50Mb/s from Canon?

Not that I'm ever going to shoot with anything that bakes in white balance ever again no matter how high the bitrate.

 

[Jim Retar]

Why am I sensing more excitement about 4:2:0 35Mb/s from Sony than 4:2:2 50Mb/s from Canon?

Not that I'm ever going to shoot with anything that bakes in white balance ever again no matter how high the bitrate.

All these cameras (including RED) are designed to be used with a seperate recording module... the onboard codec is just for offline and the occasional quick shot, I assume. (also, the Canon you mention is only 1/3")

As for white balance.... is that really the key benefit you see of shooting RAW? What were you doing before RED? White balance is so easy to get right..... Have you used a high end Sony with S-log and other gamma curves?

RAW is fantastic, the perfect option really.... but to rule out using a Sony or other high end equipment just because it is not RAW seems narrow minded.

The F3 will be a beautiful camera and I will happily use it, just like I will happily use Scarlet/Epic.

 

[Alexander Ibrahim]

Why am I sensing more excitement about 4:2:0 35Mb/s from Sony than 4:2:2 50Mb/s from Canon?

Not that I'm ever going to shoot with anything that bakes in white balance ever again no matter how high the bitrate.

I really don't think anyone is excited about the XDCAM format.

Also the 4:2:2 50Mbps format is on the 1/3" sensor XF300 and XF305 cameras.

The Canon DSLRs shoot 4:2:0 45Mbps... which turns out not to be a bad acquisition format. (As in its better than a lot of what came before.)

As to your comment about "baked in" white balance... fire up Color some time. There is a terrific amount of flexibility in simple things like color balance if you try to use it.

Comments like that make me think a lot of people on the RAW bandwagon aren't getting anything out of it they couldn't have gotten from well shot DVCPRO HD.

 

[David Rasberry]

All these cameras (including RED) are designed to be used with a seperate recording module... the onboard codec is just for offline and the occasional quick shot, I assume. (also, the Canon you mention is only 1/3")

As for white balance.... is that really the key benefit you see of shooting RAW? What were you doing before RED? White balance is so easy to get right..... Have you used a high end Sony with S-log and other gamma curves?

RAW is fantastic, the perfect option really.... but to rule out using a Sony or other high end equipment just because it is not RAW seems narrow minded.

The F3 will be a beautiful camera and I will happily use it, just like I will happily use Scarlet/Epic.

One shoots very differently with a raw camera than with a video camera. Where one controls most aspects of image look in camera before shooting with video, one exposes for raw to saturate the sensor with light as much as possible and you have much broader control in post over things like color temperature, ISO speed/exposure index, gamma curves, primary and secondary color balance.

You can shoot with and light to a particular look, natural or not, but the original raw file is affected only by the same controls that you use for film: the light itself, filters, aperture and shutter speed. Everything else is meta data.

 

[Jim Retar]

Yes, I understand all that.... notice I said that RAW is fantastic... I use it everyday.

What is not a deal breaker is having baked in white balance.

I guess I just feel that the "no RAW, no deal" statement I see on here seems like a very convenient way to bash a very nice looking camera.

If 10bit 4:4:4 uncompressed is not enough for someone to get the right image.... then I worry for them.

 

[David Rasberry]

Yes, I understand all that.... notice I said that RAW is fantastic... I use it everyday.

What is not a deal breaker is having baked in white balance.

I guess I just feel that the "no RAW, no deal" statement I see on here seems like a very convenient way to bash a very nice looking camera.

If 10bit 4:4:4 uncompressed is not enough for someone to get the right image.... then I worry for them.

The Sony will be a very good looking HD video camera, no question. All of these new cameras are wonderful tools. It's great to see these companies picking up the ball and building them at last. For those who are more comfortable in a traditional video work flow world an F3 is an attractive option. That is Sony's market.
White balance is a minor consideration, it is more for me about moving away from a video style of acquisition to something that is closer to film style digital negative acquisition. Not that you can't shoot a video camera film style within limits. Why suffer the limits?
I so look forward to shooting in the field without having to rely on an EVF or LCD image under less than ideal conditions to judge the essential quality of the images. Like film it will be more about measuring the light and judging the scene in front of the camera to expose for the most optimum image acquisition. The monitor images will be relied on more for composition and focus, far less for critical image quality judgment.
Put a Scarlet S35 on the table with 12 bit, or possibly 16 bit raw acquisition to on board SSD vs F3 8 bit 4:2:0 recording to SxS for essentially the same price. Which would you choose? Sure you can add external recorders, but why bother? A Cinedeck adds $550 a day for rental, $10k if you buy it, plus unknown future upgrade cost to 4:4:4 on the Sony.
If one wants to build a relatively long life library of stock footage that can be easily re purposed and encoded to whatever display standard is most appropriate for a project, including large scale high resolution video walls , or high quality extracted print stills, Why would one want to be limited to 1080p HD video in any form?

 

[Lee Saxon]

I'm not saying you CAN'T push and pull and coax and beg and plead to get the desired colors out of an 8-bit file that needs a different look or was improperly white balanced, I'm just saying I'd rather jab a fork in my eye than ever HAVE to again.

All these cameras (including RED) are designed to be used with a seperate recording module... the onboard codec is just for offline and the occasional quick shot, I assume.

In 1998. Now that the computing power required to write at 250MBYTE/s can be squeezed into something the size/weight of an Epic, needing to walk around with a frankenstein's-monster-looking camera with cables going every which way tethered to a giant server costing as much or more than the camera itself just to get 50MBIT/s instead of 35 is ridiculous.

 

[Lee Saxon]

By the way even more than, "Still with the stupid MPEG codecs from 1997? Really?" the question Sony and Canon REALLY need to answer, for me:

If Red can give me an S35 sensor, 5K, 100MB/s for X dollars, why can't your S35-or-smaller 1080p 50Mbit/s-or-less cameras hit 1/3-or-less of X?

 

[David Rasberry]

I'm not saying you CAN'T push and pull and coax and beg and plead to get the desired colors out of an 8-bit file that needs a different look or was improperly white balanced, I'm just saying I'd rather jab a fork in my eye than ever HAVE to again.

Yeah, numerically dialing in a color temp setting in degrees K to get where you want to be in post is a wonderful luxury.

 

[Leo Ticheli]

One shoots very differently with a raw camera than with a video camera.

No I don't. I shoot exactly the same; I try to light to make the picture on my set monitor look just like I want the finished shot to look. Yes, we always grade the footage, but the less the colorist has to do the better job I've done.

I'll quickly add that one lights a bit differently to suit the dynamic range available, but that does not change my approach.

I think I've got a pretty good eye from years of shooting film where, if there was a monitor at all, it was good for framing only, but my eye is still not the equal of the real-time image on the monitor.

My light meter is very, very rarely pulled out of the case, used mostly when scouting or lighting a very complicated set. No meter sees what the sensor sees, nor are the sensors really flat in response to light levels. What I mean is this; the meter can lie; the monitor does not. Well, not very much.

My usual disclaimer: Opinions vary; that's why they have so many different flavors in the ice cream store.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo

 

[Jim Retar]

Mate... if Scarlet is out when we start to shoot in June.... i'm all over it (2/3" cinema, like yourself).

Sooner or later I have to buy though.... so these options are great and not the "anti-cameras" that some people on here seem determined to say they are.

 

[David Rasberry]

No I don't. I shoot exactly the same; I try to light to make the picture on my set monitor look just like I want the finished shot to look. Yes, we always grade the footage, but the less the colorist has to do the better job I've done.

My light meter is very, very rarely pulled out of the case, used mostly when scouting or lighting a very complicated set. No meter sees what the sensor sees, nor are the sensors really flat in response to light levels. What I mean is this; the meter can lie; the monitor does not. Well, not very much.

My usual disclaimer: Opinions vary; that's why they so many different flavors in the ice cream store.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo

All well and good if you are on a controlled lighting set with a good calibrated reference monitor.

I still shoot using an incident meter and Adams zone techniques just as I would for film. Most of the time I shoot for fun and it is outdoors in uncontrolled conditions. The on camera LCD and EVF of my current hobby camera, a GL2, are absolutely inadequate to judge correct exposure for maximum dynamic range. I have a range of ISO references from testing that cover most conditions and with highlight and shadow reference readings to establish a contrast range, I can make an appropriate decision on where to place exposure for best results. Still have to be careful of how I white balance the scene though.

 

[David Rasberry]

Mate... if Scarlet is out when we start to shoot in June.... i'm all over it (2/3" cinema, like yourself).

Sooner or later I have to buy though.... so these options are great and not the "anti-cameras" that some people on here seem determined to say they are.

:cheers2: Here's to Scarlet by June! Lets hope they make it.