Any difference between F35 and Genesis

I thought this thread was a celebration of the f35 and the panavision genesis - not a "courtroom drama" on whether Panavision allows its gear to be sold. Anyway I love the imagery from the Genesis and the F35 and wish they made a new CCD camera made for tungsten light - guess too expensive. CMOS seems to be cheaper. oh well. Thank you technology for making the f35 go down in price so low. Same with the steadicam - I just bought a used steadicam vid pro for 3k - originally 15 years ago I think they went for 40k. And you know what - Mr Steadicam works great. And will continue to work great. And same now with the sony f3 - going for 3-5k on ebay - and they are still great cameras that have a beautiful natural skin tone out of the box and are reliable. Thank you future technology for making yesterday's Porsche so cheap. MacGregor, our cult leader, once said that line.
 
I have to pretty much agree with Ryan here. I don't have the first hand experience that he does, but it seems fairly clear that standing Panavision policy is to never sell their proprietary systems. While it's debatable whether this policy will endure in the future, there is a certain logic to it: if you want to shoot with Panavision glass, you've got no option but to rent both glass and camera from Panavision, and once you've done that, you might as well finish renting your support gear with them. If a DP wants a Panavision lens, then you might as well place the entire camera department rental budget with Panavision. It's the competitive edge. It's who they are.

Showing us links to Red and Arri cameras previously owned by Panavision for sale on eBay isn't really the same thing. The eBay links previously given in this thread are for cameras with PL mounts. As others have pointed out, those cameras were or are available for individual purchase from the manufacturer (or distributors)... thus, Panavision has no exclusive claim on them and loses nothing by selling them off once they've taken off all of the mounts and components that make the camera "Panavised".

Further, if a Panavision piece of equipment is lost/stolen from set, and is paid off by insurance or the production, Panavision may have limited legal rights to reclaim it at a later date, should it show up on eBay or elsewhere. The law on such things varies greatly from locale to locale. Again, the existence of some Panavision branded gear on eBay or in a 1st AC's gear bag doesn't mean it was ever legally sold by Panavision, or that Panavision policy is to sell old inventory. To the best of my experience, they don't sell inventory, particularly not inventory with proprietary Panavision made parts.
 
To recap, you can't buy a Panavision gensis. That's cool, we have the twin sister for purchase. Can you rent a Gensis anyhow, and if so was the rental rate similar to an f35 or much higher? Or are they all withdrawn and out-of-work/eliminated by now? I certainly haven't seen or heard of any projects shot on it recently
 
As Ryan mentioned, the Genesis bodies are being used as part of their long-standing student program. I'm sure they can be rented as required but one would be hard pressed to imagine a scenario where that would be preferable to the modern entries.

I think the discussion over Panavision selling their gear has been picked pretty clean but I will add that while the Woodland Hills and Hollywood offices are pretty much lock-tight, I heard whispers of gear slipping away from some of the satellite offices elsewhere. I once came across a set of Panavision-built plastic 400 ft vertical displacement Steadimags for the PanArri 3 at a rental house in San Francisco. I asked about them once at Woodland Hills and was told firmly that there never had been such a thing. I actually think it may have dated back to the original Panaglide which incorporated an Arri MOS camera. By the way if you guys want an amazing read, check out Garrett Brown's article "Contraption Wars" about the early Steadicam knockoffs, written before the original patents expired. The history of the Panaglide told therein is sketchy and priceless.
 
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Ebrahim Saadawi said:
To recap, you can't buy a Panavision gensis. That's cool, we have the twin sister for purchase. Can you rent a Gensis anyhow, and if so was the rental rate similar to an f35 or much higher? Or are they all withdrawn and out-of-work/eliminated by now? I certainly haven't seen or heard of any projects shot on it recently
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Last I heard they were giving Panavision Genesis cameras to some productions under their New Filmmaker Program.

The program usually gives selected student films and low budget productions a camera package grant. Typically anyone who gets accepted to the program and given the grant receives a free camera package so long as they pay some small fees for maintenance/servicing when the camera gets checked back in.

The most famous indie-film I know of to go through the program was Napoleon Dynamite (panavision film cameras, not genesis, mind you. )

http://www.panavision.com/new-filmmaker-program
 
eddavid said:
You can buy a alexa for 40k used now. Who needs a genesis.
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Well, let's see: how about those who want access to Panavision's amazing inventory of lenses? I don't know what the difference in book rate is between the Genesis and the Panavised Alexas and Reds, but I'll bet that if you had a decent size order they'd all but throw in the Genesis. Last time I was due to shoot a commercial in anamorphic, it was really hard to get hold of PL anamorphics in LA but we had no problems at Panavision.
 
David W. Jones said:
I know of Panaflex Gold, Millennium, 435, 535, which are all privately owned now. All of which have PL mounts, not PV mounts. I have shot with a former Panavision 435ES PL. I own lights and filters which were Panavision. As a matter of fact, there are a few former Panavision 435 & 535 cams for sale on ebay right now.
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As the seller of said cameras I can assure you that Panavision would not sell anything Panavision-made, I would be highly suspicious of a "privately-owned" PV made camera. ARRI stuff they flog, but I've had a telling off today for putting "Ex-Panavision" in the ad as they've been getting too many calls from people suspecting they're stolen (they're not). I do know from people that work at Panavision that stories of them smashing up ex-rental gear is absolutely true. All of the cameras I have for sale which were listed as Ex-Panavision were genuinely part of the PV rental fleet and booted out due to downsizing. Whether Woodland Hills knows that happened or not, I do not know.... The 535 actually started as a Clairmont camera, which Panavision obviously ingested at some time.

To add to the original discussion, I have been told the only thing that is shared between the F35 and the Genesis is the chip, although how genuinely different the innards are we will probably never know.I do know the Genesis is hand-made and has far fewer outputs than the F35.
 
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yachacha said:
couldn't help but notice all those links are to cameras sold by our own JMtheDP. I wonder if he has any insight or if his F65 has gotten him too busy. Also noticed a D21 for sale JM, did you ever get to work with any footage from that cam?
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The D-21 is sat in my lounge and is fully working, sadly I sold my Cinedeck with the F35. I may at some point hook the camera up to the blackmagic in my PC to get it working. It's a cool bit of kit for sure, the fanless design is clever.
 
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oh JM love to see some D-21 footage. Have you played around with it on a monitor? Does it have a grain to it like the F35 does? I bet it's actually a really nice handheld camera if you put a rosette handle on it.
 
The D-21 definitely has noise, but I would say (from a very quick, close inspection) that it is more typical CMOS noise than either the F35 or the F65. Less random.

I haven't done enough testing to reach any form of definitive conclusion. With a modern setup, the D-21 is not bad for handheld actually.
 
Not to dig up an almost 5 year old thread but just to clairify... I own a Panavised Sony HDW-F900 and after weeks of communication from my ebay seller and panavision, this is how someone like me got his hands on an old panavision camera...

Panavision has been in the process of getting rid of almost all of their gear pertaining to the F900 and Genesis given their age and investments in the RED camera they made/banking on... They send their old gear to this company in LA which then either destroys or sells it on ebay. I know of 5 PanaF900s that have sold on ebay within the last year alone from them and one person i speak to in the UK even has a 10mm Digital Primo B4 Lens! I've also seen old HDCAM decks, Genesis bodies, field monitors, and so on from panavision sell on ebay. Granted most of these things like some said in here was an invention of another companies (i.e) SONY that Panavision only modified, but still.. In my history it seems Panavision sure does make the items better and more durable with their parts.

So, there are ways to get your hands on Panavision gear legally, you just need to do a fair amount of research and practice patience. For me, the difference in image quality between the HDW-F900 and the Panavised model is pretty big! Panavision has a different pre optical filter which deals with the red color spectrium more like film..they also did internal revamping of the pre amp board so the signal to noise ratio is lower as well. Their top handle is amazing as well.. a lot more rigged than sony's version.
 
WOW!!! Thats pretty awesome Mike. I'd love to check out some footage from your Panavised F900. Or even some grabs would be nice!
 
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