F65: Best looking F65 flim yet - Monkey Kingdom

I would love to see the making of this film, how small they made the F65 and how they moved it around in the jungle.
 
Yeah, I am curious about what steps they took to minimize the weight. Not that I would be compelled to follow suite, but definitely curious.
 
abreu-canedo said:
Yeah, I am curious about what steps they took to minimize the weight. Not that I would be compelled to follow suite, but definitely curious.
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Well the article say it was still 63-lbs with lens and tripod.

I'm thinking that at that point it really doesn't matter if it's 59-lbs or 71-lbs ..... Wow. But I guess that's still a lot less than what a typical major Disney Film crew is hauling around every day.
 
Looking at one of the pictures I see...

F65 body 11 lbs
Canon 30-300 13 lbs
Ronford 2000 20 lbs
Romford sticks 22 lbs
 
DPStewart said:
Well the article say it was still 63-lbs with lens and tripod.

I'm thinking that at that point it really doesn't matter if it's 59-lbs or 71-lbs ..... Wow. But I guess that's still a lot less than what a typical major Disney Film crew is hauling around every day.
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Weird response about what matters or not. I suppose that is your opinion. My question was more about the fact the the article mentioned that they customized the camera itself to reduce its weight. So I'm curious about what they actually did to the camera.

The F65 with the recorder is still a few pounds lighter than an Alexa Studio body alone. The Alexa Plus is 16.1lbs. F65/SRR4 is 16lbs. Most major picture rigs are all coming in at around 50lbs or more, fully rigged for tripod or supported.
 
I'm really not sure there is much you can do to "lighten" an F65, more a case of not adding stuff to it.

The standard motion picture setup if you used a C300 over an F65 you wouldn't really be saving that much weight - by the time all the crap has been added to the camera, they all get big. Especially when the DoP decides he's taken with Panavision's 11:1 Primo zoom.
 
Interesting that what seems to matter most to people in this thread is the weight of the camera. Surely with such beautiful footage we could be focusing on something which isn't much more than just a logistical question?

Maybe it's just me, but personally I find the dimensionality of the images astounding. Not to mention the care with which people spent placing themselves in terrific lighting situations in order to enable even tiny insects to be seen or predicting when an animal enters a shot...simply astonishing. There is a lot of hard work and patience behind this material.
 
Like most Sony products it gets bashed for non-sensical reasons. The three reasons the F65 got trashed when it came out, and still does now, are:

1. It's too heavy
2. It makes too much data
3. It draws too much power

--

1. It weighs less than an ALEXA + Codex and near-as-much the same as a regular ALEXA. Less than a studio.
2. The F65RAW is smaller than the ALEXA's raw modes, despite significantly increased resolution. It also offers HD video modes at comparable to ProRes data levels.
3. It draws 10w more than an ALEXA classic.

---

But yes, pictures should be king - and in the right hands it makes wonderful imagery.
 
I think in terms of the criticism it was justified:

1. Weight. It is heavy. In the world of the red and now arri alexa mini - it's an older heavier camera that weighs about 20 lbs.

2. Workflow. Before the SR-D1 came out, it seems with the Sony SR-PC4 you had to first create a network with a computer which required some computing knowledge then from there transfer clip by clip to your computer. The SR-D1, right, it's boots up like a disk drive? And you can just copy it over. I think that was important.

3. Power draw. Again it's older like the Alexa classic - the power draw is pretty intense and if you are in the middle of recording, I don't think it has the best recovery options. I haven't looked into this yet.

Yet with all this said, it has the best digital image out of any digital camera from my testing. 14 stops dynamic range, beautiful natural skintones, a mechnical shutter - beautiful 120 FPS slow motion. It's a 4k Alexa. And right now it's going for cheaper on ebay. It's a mature product - probably end of life - so it has its kinks worked out.

Will the 4k Alexa be around the corner? Probably - but probably to the tune of 120k, if past Alexa price costs indicate this.
And what about the Red Weapon and all that? I think the Red Weapon looks nice as well - as well as the Red Dragon - and they both can live together in a nice world.

I haven't really done any tests with them side-by-side to have an opinion.

I like the F65 I just got. I realize the shortcomings and the strengths, just as every camera has the same plusses and minuses.

I'm happy it didn't really take off - cause that allowed me to get one for a good deal.
 
I'm in the same boat - if it didn't get bashed I wouldn't be able to afford one either!

It's never going to be a lightweight camera, but I have to laugh at all the people shooting with ALEXA minis as an A-Camera - then building them up to be the same size as the damn original, just more awkward!

The workflow was definitely the worst point, Sony totally screwed that one.

It still gets my goat when I see people dismiss it, then go and use cameras which are just as heavy and data intensive for a (subjectively/technically) worse picture.
 
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