F3 arrived? Post it up here!

[TimurCivan]

Just picked up my F3.

Its gorgeous. Unpacked just now. Hooked up a cooke 100mm panchro.
The lattitude is absurd.

More to come later.

**** camera is set to 3200 iso and my mouth is on the floor. Hooked up to my 60" sony xbr2 tv. Grainless. Its grainless. Its scary.

[Kegan]

Super jealous Timur. You live in such a great testing ground for cameras. I think I'm going to head back to NYC in the next couple months for some creative inspiration.

Gotta get my hands on a F3 to play around with,

Kegan

[HHL]

Its gorgeous. Unpacked just now. Hooked up a cooke 100mm panchro.
The lattitude is absurd.

More to come later.

**** camera is set to 3200 iso and my mouth is on the floor. Hooked up to my 60" sony xbr2 tv. Grainless. Its grainless. Its scary.

Hearing this from you....is SCARY to me. I can't WAIT to see your upcoming comments/tests/footy! Lead the way Timur!

[TimurCivan]

I made a mistake. What i thought was 3200 ISO was actually 1600 ISO..... But still, if thats the performace at 1600, 3200 is more than acceptable.

@ 1600(+12DB) it looks like an EX1 @ 0db

According to DIT/Cameratech extraordinaire Tom Wong, 0dB is 400 ISO. I thought 0dB was 800 ISO.

The menu's are extensive and deep. Like the EX3, but with more control. Its power efficient too, ive had it sitting here with one Switronix 90wh battery running a Small HD monitor and the camera for over 2 hours now, and i still have 14.3 volts left. The camera is a 12v camera, so ive still got a ways to go.






Ive got a full Zacuto kit supporting the camera. The f3 is quite light, and it feels airy, despite being rigid and robustly built. The build quality is nice, with a few small gripes. The SXS card door is a chisy piece of plastic that doesn't even snap into place, it just sort of lays there. meh. didnt like that, especially for the price. However, aside from that..... its all pretty incredible.

The Image quality is organic, razor sharp, and grain less. Grain less and organic are tough to have together at the same time. Grain less images, like the 5d MKII @ at 160 ISO looks plastic and sterile. Some how the sony circuitry pulls it off with flying colors. Someone at sony is REALLY listening to what the consumer wants. Ive been dreaming of this camera for 6 years. Seriously, the last time i was moved by image quality like this i was looking at the live tap on an Alexa.

EDIT:

So -3 dB is 280 ISO. This is a nice workable stop outdoors. Though i have a strong feeling that you will be sacrificing the highlights, like in a RED. I think the 800 ISO is the sweet spot for Noise/DR. This is roughly based on the crudest of testing and initial hypothesis. I havent put anything through its paces yet.

Some good news. My Cookes are as awesome as i hoped they would be. I had no doubts, but they are simply put small S4's. They contribute alot i feel to the organic nature of the images im seeing. As i have no other glass, i cant really make a comment. I am planning to shoot some stuff on sunday that will hlp me get an idea of how to expose this camera. I will say this out of the box the rendition of highlights are exceptional. This camera NEEDS an external 10bit Recorder. The live tap is so beautiful in its 10bit uncompressed glory. I wonder how the XD cam will hold up. I pointed the camera at a chandelier, and it exposed the clear lightbulbs. Thats a tough feat for a camera. It really represents light to dark in a beautiful way.


EDIT***

More amazing surprises. I just had my mind blown. Tom Wong was playing with the camera before we packed it away earlier tonight. I get home, hook it up VIA HDMI to my 46" 1080p Plasma, and turn on the camera. The image is stunning. Crisp, grain less and full of lush tones. I say to myself, it looks good here, let me blast the ISO up and see how it is when it falls apart, i click the gain switch to "H", wait the switch wont move.... why because it was ALREADY on "H"...... at 3200 ISO!!!!!!!!!! 3200 ISO is so good, i would literally shoot my next project on it, not tell anyone its at 3200, and i think, not only would people not notice anything wrong, i thin they would comfortably respond to how good it looks. Its that good.....

This thing is ridiculous. Just ridiculous....

I know i know you guys want images..... Honestly, im for the most part computer illiterate, and i cant figure out how to import the XDcam footage into vegas or premiere just yet. :/


A bunch more info here: http://timurcivan.blogspot.com/

[Fohdeesha]

I just can't read these threads anymore, I've never experienced this level of jealousy

[nugat]

Does the PL mount adapter need/support shimming?

[TimurCivan]

The PL is rock solid. it can be colimated with a built in adjustment. Though its accurate from the factory.

[OutlawsDelejos]

I'm getting a hands on with one of these in about 2 weeks, but this is like stirring the kids up on Christmas Eve and then telling them to go to bed.

[xmephestox]

Does the PL mount adapter need/support shimming?

you can adjust the backfocus on the camera too with some allen wrenches, similar to an R1 if something goes wonky. I played with the camera for a couple hours. the feature set feel about 90% cine alta, 10% prosumer. the menu system is so deep, I think they ported it from a f35, I gotta dig up a f35 manual to see if it has any info on what half the stuff does. You can literally paint box your image with individual RGB channels in a variety of different ways. Think hvx200 scene file on absolute crack. I'd love to if there is a way to have separate software on a computer to build luts and load them on the camera...

you are limited to the preset ISO's in the camera, but I get the feeling the camera is optimized for those ISO's and works best there, hence the high iso performance it has.

funny enough, my favorite feature of the night was something they ported from the ex3. the s&q button/knob on the side. push it, press execute. you're in high speed, and you can dial in your FPS with the knob before you start rolling. press it in again, hit execute, you're back in standard speed. You wouldn't believe the amount of times a music director is screaming for high speed and you are spending time digging through menus. (don't work with ex3 much... when i say much i mean never )

but Ill let Timur finish up the talking. I'm gonna go geek out again later this weekend.

[Matthew Bennett]

Oh Timur! So glad to see one of these in your hands! Looking forward to footage.

I completely concur, the image processing/DSP dept. at Sony is a place of true artistry!!