Anyone with an F23 in Los Angeles?

Panavision might still have some. Otherwise the only person I know with an F23 has just put it on eBay
 
There were two F23s on eBay earlier today. One just closed, the other closes tomorrow.

... On a completely separate note, I just bought a Sony F23 for $3,577.77, shipped, with IF Box, travel case, and assistant panel.
I certainly would be open to renting it out...
 
macgregor said:
Nice!
Where are you at? What lenses will you be using with it?
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As my tag says - Nashville, Tennessee - is where I'm based.

For the moment I own no lenses for it. In the short term, I'll see what the rental house has. In the long term, it looks like DigiPrime sets are in the wild for under $10k...

In a way, it was an impulse purchase today. But from prior taks on this forum, it sounds like there are only a couple hundred F23 cameras in existence. And until now it seemed impossible to find them for sale used. The logic seems to go that the F23's deep depth of field is ideal for green screen work, and that they've not gone on sale used because they're still workhorses.

Consider this... the F23 has three sensors, each 1920x1080 (R,G,B, respectively). That's 2.07MP per sensor, 6.22MP combined. Now, the active 16x9 area on a 4k bayer sensor is about 8.3MP. Half of those are green pixels, a fourth are red, and a forth are blue. So what's one fourth of 8.3MP? 2.075MP.

So the F23 has virtually the same number of red and blue pixels as a 4k (3840x2160) bayer sensor. And, given the prism, all three colors are being collected from the same segment of the frame - wheras the Bayer sensor is interpolated four filtered photosites adjacent to one another.
 
macgregor said:
This is actually not a bad deal if you already own a F35 and some old TV zoom lenses:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sony-F23-Di...831?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1a0347ff97

The way I see it, we'd just need to replace the body but all the accessories, evf, and interfaces would be compatible right? so depending on the job you just switch the body and keep the rest.
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I definitely looked at that listing. It started before the one I won. I could have done as you say - borrowed from my F35 (which, I will still end up doing for the viewfinder). But, if you don't already have an F35, getting the IF box could be an easy extra $1k, so be careful.
 
go for it yachacha! I know you and viddo have been wanting one for a long time now!

...then it's time to hunt around for some digi primes :-)
 
Well, I guess I ended up paying an extra $1k for: IF box, Assistant Panel, Power Cables, L-Handle, and travel case. Not a bad deal for either of us!

Also, do note, the seller I bought from appears to have a second camera, they might list that one soon.
 
Thanks everyone who didn't bid! I won the barebone F23. Hopefully I have it in a week or so it is shipping across the US from NYC.

Mac send a PM when you want to borrow it, I have access to ENG b4 Lenses also.

Call me crazy but I've been looking at the new black magic 5" recorder. If I have the 7Q/IF box for 12-bit, it would be nice to have an all in one LCD/recorder and ditch the IF box also. The new pix 5" is nice also but it would require box to make 3G and it is just a little pricey for 10-bit. With a 22x lens this will make a great run and gun setup.

I also keep going back to the crazy idea of putting Atomos Ninja Star inside the F23, either up top or down on the bottom where the memory stick port is.

If only smallHD had made the 502 a recorder also, it would be the perfect fit to make the recorder/EVF combo as small as possible. I am also tempted to see if I can retro fit the Smallhd 502 EVF loupe (only $300 by itself) to fit onto the black magic 5" LCD.

got a F55 handle also to put on F35 or F23, I was going to put it on my F35, but my wooden camera handle is still more low profile so I can't decide. I might put the F55 handle on the F23 because it looks a little more ENG.IMG_3071.jpgIMG_8325.jpg
 
Congrats! I've read some dp's actually preferred the image of the f23 to the f35, perhaps its the triple chip mojo?

Which brings me to my next question, you can only use b4 lenses designed for triple ccd chips on the f23, ( ie. digiprimes + others right? )
The cheaper b4 lenses on ebay designed for single 2/3" sensors wouldn't work? Or even older 16mm glass?
 
All B4 lenses should be designed for 3x 2/3" chips. I think only C-mount lenses were not.

Seriously though, there is so much cine B4 glass at crazy money out there right now, it is nuts.
 
Yeah,

I'm doing digiprime research right now. The prices are frickin' insane, and I'm not sure I've found the floor yet. We're talking less than 10% of new cost, for lenses in close to mint shape.
 
yes, all 2/3" cameras use 3 chips so the B4 lenses will work, people you see using B4 lenses on single chip cameras like a GH4 are actually using the lenses for the wrong format, the colors separate slightly on the edges because of this.

I think we are mixing talk of cheap SD ENG B4 lenses with HD B4 ENG lenses and there is a big difference when using high resolution cameras like the F23. SD lenses are the cheap ones that can be had for a few hundred dollars, HD lenses look very similar in build but are in the thousands and are of higher quality. Look at the Canon 4.7 wide angle zoom, it comes as cinema zoom and ENG zoom. ENG is just the type of camera where everything is compact and set for handheld. ENG lenses will have zoom servo built into the handgrip but as long as it was designed for HD cameras, and has been cared for, the ENG B4 lenses can be just as high quality as the cinema zooms designed or b4 also. However dvxuser usually come across cheap ENG lenses designed for SD cameras back in 1990 and they do funny things in the corners of the image. These SD lenses should not even be considered serious when trying to consider ENG format lenses for a camera. The digiprimes sound tasty and I love high speed primes, but only of the glorious options I can try on the F23 that I can't on the F35 is a superzoom so this is where ENG B4 lenses come into play.
 
yachacha said:
yes, all 2/3" cameras use 3 chips so the B4 lenses will work, people you see using B4 lenses on single chip cameras like a GH4 are actually using the lenses for the wrong format, the colors separate slightly on the edges because of this.

I think we are mixing talk of cheap SD ENG B4 lenses with HD B4 ENG lenses and there is a big difference when using high resolution cameras like the F23. SD lenses are the cheap ones that can be had for a few hundred dollars, HD lenses look very similar in build but are in the thousands and are of higher quality. Look at the Canon 4.7 wide angle zoom, it comes as cinema zoom and ENG zoom. ENG is just the type of camera where everything is compact and set for handheld. ENG lenses will have zoom servo built into the handgrip but as long as it was designed for HD cameras, and has been cared for, the ENG B4 lenses can be just as high quality as the cinema zooms designed or b4 also. However dvxuser usually come across cheap ENG lenses designed for SD cameras back in 1990 and they do funny things in the corners of the image. These SD lenses should not even be considered serious when trying to consider ENG format lenses for a camera. The digiprimes sound tasty and I love high speed primes, but only of the glorious options I can try on the F23 that I can't on the F35 is a superzoom so this is where ENG B4 lenses come into play.
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Even HD B4 glass is going at very low prices relative to new. The fact that so much industry work is now done in large format means there is a glut of B4 glass (even HD) not being used. But obviously the SD glass is going for even lower pricing.

As for primes versus zooms and so forth - I already own Ultra Primes. They're expensive, and still worth 70-80% of their new cost. Digiprimes cost nearly the same as Ultra Primes new (per lens), and are, as far as I can tell, of an equivalent quality in engineering and performance. And they're available for 10% or so of their cost new. That makes them a far better bargain for an owner operator.
 
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