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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 :)

Sony PMW-F3L vs. RED-One ???

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And let's not even mention what it's going to cost to record 4:4:4 if you are not willing to record to their nonsense codec. People keep mentioning the HD-SDI out, but by the time you get that, you might as well have a Red. If Sony would have released this camera 4 years ago at $9,000, they would now completely own the entire market.

Meryem, someone affiliated with Canon basically told me that info. I don't remember all the details, but let's put it this way: the Canon 5D2 has been fabulously profitable for Canon. If the brass at Sony catches wind of how much $$$$$ they lost out on due to the 5D2, heads will be rolling for sure. Hehe.
 
I love these boards. I learn from them. Currently I'm shooting a show called Justified using the Sony 9000PL camera. I have owned a Red Camera for nearly three years and love it. Unfortunately, for many reasons to numerous to list, some of which I can not mention, Sony Entertainment is locked in to a tape based post workflow for shows that have solid air dates. I know, I know. I have gone on Sony openings and talked about their 900's, F'35's, and 9000PL's. I always let the audience know that I am a MX Red Camera owner and I love my camera. For someone that must use an F35 or 9000PL the new lightweight PMW-F3L is a handy tool. It's small, lightweight, and uses PL lenses. Considering the steadicam operator carried 135lb using the F35 something like the PMW is a handy little camera. I'm glad they made the camera because it fits their own product line. I think all of us know that a comparison between Epic, Red MX and the PMW is silly. All are different tools to be used as such. In my case, on a Sony Entertainment Television Project. Which looks pretty darn good.

Francis Kenny, ASC
 
Tom, if you accept "tied in", it is not neccesarily too expensive to shoot 444 10-bit log.

If you want to enter Codex land, well then of course... But I don't think uncompressed is the only option anymore. Arri blew that door pretty loudly in with the Alexa (along with RED and RAW, of course, but that - as we all know - is a totally different story...)
 
I think a hugely overlooked spec is that zoom rocker and 2012 launch of fast, zoom lenses to use this system.

For around the price of an R1-MX brain, you could possibly be recording s35, uncompressed 4:4:4, s-log with a motorized, fast zoom lens.

I know most on here are film makers, so this doesn't sound all that excting... but for certain productions, it will be quite stunning.

I think a single HD-SDI, 4:2:2 cheap version will soon come along that will compete with Af100 and Scarlet.
 
Depending on your requirements, that does not neccesarily mean a codex or an SR deck to uncompressed... Just sayin'. And as RED (and Arri, though in diferent ways...-:)) hav paved the way for, the 444 doesn't need to be uncompressed for a lot of work.

It's like when people used to say RED post was unhandlable based on the 16 bit 4k files one could extract...

Just playin' the devils advocate here. But there're a couple of hundred reasons I am not interested in this camera.

The ability to record 444 or 422 10-bit log is not one of them, though... -:)

Actually that's about the best thing about the system... -:)

I could record, edit and playback 10-bit 444 long before I got my RED -:)
 
4:4:4

4:4:4

I agree the ability to record 1080p 4:4:4 is one of the better things about this camera.

But it's certainly not included (i.e. free)
 
Agreed, but that is indeed the case for most any solution you choose. You'll allways need to add a "little extra" to get what you "really" want -:)

Sorry.

No need for the rant.

Please delete if offensive... -:)
 
Can we even call the output 4:4:4 anyway? Anyone actually measured the camera yet? Will it perform like the F35:
F35chroma.png


Although the F35 outputs 4:4:4, and you can record 4:4:4, I don't see the image as worthy of that due to the massive chroma moire.

And if the F3 has a better image than the F35, what then of the F35?

Graeme
 
Without oversampling is any 1080p camera really 1080p? And what the hell is the F35 doing to get that much moire in the image anyways?
 
Stuart English said:
Have you forgotten the cost of the 4:4:4 uncompressed recorder ?
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Cinedeck - $10k... fits bang in to the budget I suggested. By 2012, when the zoom lens is available, i'm sure more options will be available (and the F3 will be cheaper)

As far as I am aware, RED, Alexa etc do not have any kind of rocker zoom lens system in the pipeline for s35, so Sony (against popular assumption here) are actually creating something innovative. Of course, we are yet to see how it will work and what else will be out by 2012.... but it is an interesting aspect to the F3 that will help sell the concept.

Resolution aside (not everything in life), it seems to be quite a future proof system.

Would I choose one to make a feature? doubtful... the Epic-S should be much better.... but for certain other broadcast situations, I can see it making a huge splash.
 
Erik Franzén said:
Without oversampling is any 1080p camera really 1080p? And what the hell is the F35 doing to get that much moire in the image anyways?
Click to expand...

Who knows, it's an out of context blow up of a chart with no information what so ever of what it means or why it means or even what resolution that area of the chart is supposed to test.
I tend to take things like that with a huge grain of salt as I've seen enough f35 and genesis movies in my time to know it isn't full of such obvious moire.
The F35 will stick around because it's flex-able stick on an SRW 1 deck and you have HDCAM SR tape swap in the SR card reader (Available sometime in the future) and you have Solid state HDCAM SR.
 
Erik Franzén said:
Without oversampling is any 1080p camera really 1080p? And what the hell is the F35 doing to get that much moire in the image anyways?
Click to expand...

According to Nyquist sampling theory, the most you can sample without ever risking moire is half the resolution. But that's, well, terrible, and so most manufacturers find some balance between moire and softness. No one prevents in entirely. The 7d is on one extreme of moire (i.e. almost completely unacceptable) whereas Red has been very aggressive in preventing it, although the MX sensor has a less aggressive OLPF than does the original sensor. Sony seems to be in between.

Sony's not dumb and neither is Red. What looks like moire in that test chart will look like sharpness 98% of the time. Sony's white papers show that while digital lacks the fine detail of film it has much superior micro-contrast (mtf leading up to extinction) and so 1080p video has similar perceptual sharpness to film, even in mathematical terms (the Heynacher Integral, which some dude at Zeiss or Kodak invented forever ago and which is simply the integral of the area under the mtf curve). 1080p video off modern cameras lacks the fine detail of film, but is sharper and more contrasty leading up to fine detail and so it looks as sharp or sharper.

Red's approach is technically superior, no doubt about it, and with enough flexibility to apply sharpening as each project or shot requires. For IMAX or whatever it needs less dnr than film or 1080p digital and so it rocks. But the workflow is more expensive. Red is pushing the "4k is the future" thing because once producers start asking for 4k they stop asking for other cameras. This isn't something the company is doing out of the kindness of its heart to give us superior image quality. It's something it's doing to gain traction in the market.

This is, like every other corporate battle in the film industry, a matter of what is "good enough." Past that point cheaper technology wins. Both Sony and Red have different ideas of "good enough" but ultimately it's the studios that choose. Just to throw a curveball into the equation, Fuji's new Eterna 500 Vivid has poor mtf (extinct by 45 lp/mm, or 2.2K of resolution) and is grainier with worse micro-contrast than digital. Its perceptual sharpness is almost certainly less than the F35's or something.

Super35 film isn't really that great even now (and it's way better than it has been in the past). It's in Red's interest to make film seem better, technically, than it is, which is why they provide resolution measurements from slow film and with generous mtf cut-off points (around 20%) as a point of comparison. If film is "good enough" and the F35 looks as sharp as film (as measured by a reputable metric, the Heynacher Integral), that's a problem for a company pushing 4k. But if Red can position 4k (which, technically, is undeniably superior to film) as better than "good enough" and 1080p as worse--then Red wins.

Both Sony and Red ignore that the real battle lies in a good workflow for 3D. The average audience member knows the difference between 3D and 2D but doesn't even have the eyesight necessary to differentiate between 2k and 4k (let alone the 300lpph, or about 720p of resolution, the average print has nowadays). There's a correlation between 3D and box office receipts and post conversions are extremely expensive and have not been well-received. This is where the real format war begins.

Also, this camera isn't even out yet.
 
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Tom Lowe said:
I don't remember all the details, but let's put it this way: the Canon 5D2 has been fabulously profitable for Canon. If the brass at Sony catches wind of how much $$$$$ they lost out on due to the 5D2, heads will be rolling for sure. Hehe.
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Sony has just announced that they'll be investing $1.2 billion into a new production line which will allow them to double their CCD and CMOS imaging sensor output to 50,000 units/month. That's a lotta units. They are still the second largest producer of imaging sensors, compared to Canon.

We all know the major manufacturers of imaging equipment could have done much better, and we are all grateful to RED for putting a sword to the throat of trickleware and for developing quantum leaps where the others were moving in baby steps. But the major manufacturers probably still have a few tricks up the sleeve. It is still early in this game. It is about to get very interesting.
 
Do the math, guys. Sony will probably sell hundreds of thousands of these cameras, much more than they can sell of the F35. They will make likely make hundreds of millions more off of it that they would make off the F35. They saw what was coming with Red M-X and Alexa and I think they knew the high-end was getting threatened. So now they make a camera that will cost $13,000 sans lenses and will get the job more effectively for long-form television, dramatic, and corporate work than the Red. You can record up to six hours of video on it for damn cheap. The Red One with all its battery packs and recording modules ends up costing around $45,000. And the workflow just isn't the most intuititive for workflow that at the end of the day needs to be only 1080p. This is also a camera that weighs only around 6 lbs without lens. What does the Red weigh when you add on the battery etc- 30lbs?

It's a different beast going for a different market.
 
they're going to sell over 200,000 of these? wow.

i don't know what to say about your post here... i would delete it if i were you, it makes you seem a little uninformed.
 
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