The good news is that Sony will surely drop that dumb idea of charging a license for using the whole sensor...;-)
Alexa LF
- Thread starter roxics
- Start date
CharlesPapert
Director of Photography
I came up mostly shooting 2/3" video and 16mm, so this has long been my MO. Sometimes this is a function of lighting (or "un-lighting" aka turning lights off, or neg fill) and other times it's about landing the frame just so, where the subject is positioned against a particular piece of background.
JPNola
Veteran
yeah, poor ole' Sony...
"Sony has boosted its forecast figures for the 2017 fiscal year from the outlook announced in August. The company now expects net profit to total $3.36 billion (¥380 billion), compared to the previous $2.26 billion figure (¥255 billion), for a gain of $2.7 billion (¥307 billion) year-on-year. It also raised its revenue forecast from $73.4 billion (¥8,300 billion) to $75.1 billion (¥8,500 billion) for a year-on-year increase of 12%. "
In 2017 the Sony Fs7 became the best selling Super 35mm sensor video camera of all time.
Grug
Veteran
That may be true, but it doesn't have any relevance to a comparison of images, which would always (for obvious reasons) be compared on indentical screens (because, well... basic scientific method).
Samuel H
Major Contributor
Source?
puredrifting
Major Contributor
Many are missing the big picture, cinema cameras are an infintessimal part of most of these worldwide conglomerates overall earnings. Digital cinema cameras, for companies like Sony and Canon, are essentially a hobby, a prestige way to enhance their brand. They care about digital cinema sales, but they don't live and die by them.
JPNola
Veteran
Samuel- I don't recall where I read that. I saw it when I was searching online trying to find out total Sony Fs7 sales numbers and total Canon C300 sales numbers. Possibly that it is just marketing hype from Sony. I personally do not find it a questionable claim at all. I think most would agree that the best-selling s35 camera is either the C300 or the Fs7. And over the past two years, as the market for s35 cameras has exploded, the Fs7 has by all indicators been far out-selling the C300. The Fs7 has been dominating the rental house figures for a while now and rentals are generally a reflection of sales, at least for widely affordable gear which includes the Fs7 camera. But this topic has nothing at all to do with the Alexa LF, so let's save any debate over best-selling s35 camera for another day.
For anyone who has not yet seen it, here is the ARRI promo for the LF that people are referring to as "the faces video":
For anyone who has not yet seen it, here is the ARRI promo for the LF that people are referring to as "the faces video":
Last edited:
Sony really blew their gasket with the F65, and made something that had a great image while being nigh unusable for most productions. There's a reason why Arri took over, despite Sony having dominated the digital market for so long. The F65's data rates were just insane, at the time, and there was no reasonable ProRes equivalent. On top of that, though the Alex isn't a light camera, it's certainly got a less unwieldy body than the F65. The Venice corrects a lot of those problems, and does everything people have been asking for, so I wonder how well it will do. I don't think most rental houses are eager to dish out massive amount of money on PLP lenses, but then again it is Arri.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
I am hoping to get my hands on both the Venice and the Alexa LF for shooting and comparisons. Just looking at the Sony test film (The Dig) for the Venice, while it looked good, to me, it didn't look great. Probably more a function of directorial choices than the camera itself though. Most the episodic and features I have worked on for the past few years have been Alexa or Alexa Mini shows and every time I hang at video village, looking at live images with the DPs LUT, I am blown away at the look, the Arris definitely have something that REDs and Sonys don't, even though the REDs and Sonys can make great looking images. Hollywood agrees if you look at all of the Emmy and Oscar nominated shows and features as I did for articles the last couple of years, its a LOT of Arris. I don't think the addition of the Venice or the LF will change the overall camera landscape at all. Most popular stuff will still shoot on Arris, followed by RED, followed by Sony and a smattering of Varicam projects. All of the new cameras are great but from an overall perspective, they are merely evolutionary, definitely not revolutionary.
JPNola
Veteran
ARRI always had the advantage in cinema productions and "high-end" productions of ARRI's provenance in the film industry. DP's individually and the industry at large had a history with ARRI cameras and an affection for ARRI if not also an emotional attachment. ARRI had, and has still, a reputation of cameras built like tanks and being of no compromise when it came to design. There was nothing "cheap" or plasticky about them. And they worked even under the most adverse, abusive conditions. I think that a lot of people were using the F65 in part because ARRI just had not yet entered the digital market. They weren't using the F65 because it was a better product than the ARRI digital cinema offering. ARRI had no offering at the time. ( Correct me if I have the timeline wrong and there was not in fact a period when ARRI had no answer to the F65. ) It was inevitable that as soon as ARRI caught back up to the trend and fully ventured into digital cameras that many would go back home to ARRI and away from the F65 or any other Sony offering.
The Venice may have a role in the area of Owner / Ops who don't want to shell out the bucks for the ARRI LF. I know of a DP who works in network sports tv and he quickly put himself in line to get a Sony Venice. The LF is said to be roughly $113k. The Venice is $44k. The Venice is more in his price range and provides him what he needs and wants. So the ARRI LF isn't necessarily a Venice-killer any more than the Alexa has been a F55-killer. Owners of F55's who upgrade to a Venice can use their current VF and AXS-R7 RAW recorder with the Venice. The ability for a user to swap out the block in the Venice- without need of a clean room- is not only a cool feature but leaves the door open for a HFR block that many suspect is soon to come. Likely on the order of 200fps if the high-speed rates of Sony's lower-priced cameras are any indicator. A bit curious that the Venice doesn't have a global shutter but, that said, it seems as if the industry has decided that global shutter isn't anything that cannot be lived without now that panning-skew has largely been minimized with increased readout speed.
There is a "high-end" production market that exists other than features and commercials. Yes, ARRI dominates the features world. By far most of the cameras working on features are from rental houses. In the Owner / Op segment ARRI is less dominant and Sony cameras are more of players. I doubt that with the Venice Sony thought they were going to unseat ARRI in the feature film production market. I saw the Venice as aimed more at the Owner / Op market, commercials, high-end corporate, and the aforementioned sports tv market. Essentially the same market that the F55 occupied, but only Full Frame and more versatile than the F55.
Last edited:
I was more referring to the point in time where the F35/Genesis had made a pretty good impression, and even the Star Wars prequels were being shot on the F23/F900. Sony had a lot of legitimacy, but failed to deliver a good competitor to the Alexa. For perspective, at a workshop I asked one of the DPs for Game of Thrones if they shot RAW, and he said no because they're usually running 2-3 cameras and the data rates aren't worth it. They only do it for green screen work, and this is in 2017. What production was going to think the F65s data rates were reasonable back then?
morgan_moore
Major Contributor
Out of interest are not the data rates of raw lower than prores444.
In stills world we are used to cameras that shoot raw at selectable compression and but depth (12 or 14) and a baked look proxy (at lower res if needed) at the same time.. Onto two cards at once for instant backup (!)
In stills world we are used to cameras that shoot raw at selectable compression and but depth (12 or 14) and a baked look proxy (at lower res if needed) at the same time.. Onto two cards at once for instant backup (!)
puredrifting
Major Contributor
I strongly feel it's a regional thing too. I work mostly in Hollywood and travel sometimes on Hollywood features and episodic and for U.S. studio production, it seems Arri is favored. I agree about the owner operator thing, most Arris come from rental houses. I know in other parts of the country and especially in the UK, Europe and Asia, Sony is more popular than Arri, seeing an Arri on a UK or Chinese production is rarer than seeing it on a US studio production. Interestingly I have shot on several Sony Pictures and TriStar features and all were shot on Arri, no corporate mandate from the studio there to use Sony cameras. I am interested to try out the Venice, the price is definitely designed to appeal more to RED shoppers.