camera comparison F3 - ALEXA - RED MX

The vimeo compression (blacks esp.) is worse on this one than usual, but the results are really interesting coming from a company who rents them all. Amazing how close the Alexa is to 35mm. No wonder Deakins likes it so much. And was that with just it's on-board ProRes?

The MX wasn't looking so great compared to the the cheaper and more compact F3, considering.
S-log tests need to be included soon. I wonder though, was the F3 recorded just to sxs?
 
The Alexa really is an amazing piece of technology.... what kind of DR does it have? I'd read 13.5 (similar claims to MX).... but it seems to have much, much more latittude. As good as film.

The F3 holds up well and, of course, can get better once s-log is here.
 
For an informal test, I liked it.

For an informal test, I liked it.

For an informal test, I liked it.

The Alexa seemed the best with regard to skew. The F3 seemed in the same ballpark as the Red MX.

The F3 showed some moire in the D cube, but that's an extremely high frequency of lines so it should rarely appear in real life. Oddly enough the F3 seemed to do a little better in resolution, so I imagine that was the trade off the engineers made.

Based on these results I have no complaints with any of these cameras. They are all great.

The best thing is this was the F3 using SxS cards. It should only get better with an external recorder. :love4:
 
Looks like they did some weird compression that makes everything blocky as if de-interlaced (looking at the 1080p download) that exaggerates any alaising. But super cool test anyway! I wonder what the f3 would look like with s-log? The blow outs are a bit ugly on the f3 compared to the alexa in this test- could be a picture profile adjustment to make them look better.

Oh my that alexa is one pretty picture maker... the dynamic range shot looks like film.
 
One thing I don't understand in the test is that the way he test for latitude. You can clearly see that the test of the Alexa was done on a very cloudy (gray and even snowy) weather while the F3 and RED are on a sunny day. They are extreme in terms contrast and makes this test at least flawed.
 
Danielvilliers said:
One thing I don't understand in the test is that the way he test for latitude. You can clearly see that the test of the Alexa was done on a very cloudy (gray and even snowy) weather while the F3 and RED are on a sunny day. They are extreme in terms contrast and makes this test at least flawed.
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Very interesting. I didn't even notice the snow the first time I watched this. I figured they did these tests all in the same day.
Absolutely flawed in that regard.
 
Looking at the lat charts, I'd have thought the MX (same sensor as the Epic) would have been better, but it isn't at all. With F3 on S-log, it seems like it would easily surpass it. Not that this really matters that much but it's interesting how, for the money, you can go that far. I'd be using diffusion a lot anyway so the high freq. stuff means little to nothing to me.
 
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TimurCivan said:
Is that not the F3 at this point? i mean if they made a $20k AlexaIIc, i think it would be a damn similar camera image wise.
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I pretty much agree, if Arri made a sister camera it would pretty much be the F3, all the testing so far shows this is the case.
 
Cinesin said:
Looking at the lat charts, I'd have thought the MX (same sensor as the Epic) would have been better, but it isn't at all. With F3 on S-log, it seems like it would easily surpass it. Not that this really matters that much but it's interesting how, for the money, you can go that far. I'd be using diffusion a lot anyway so the high freq. stuff means little to nothing to me.
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I don't think you can tell much of anything about any of those cameras from that test. Change the gamma curve on any them and the results would be totally different. I've seen Red footage reach much deeper in to shadows without clipping highlights than that test would indicate, and at least in its native format it would show no moire at all on that resolution chart, so it is all down to how it was encoded and compressed. Alexa has the advantage for working in Prores as that is what the camera output is optimized for. Smart move on Arri's part and an understandable reason for its current popularity.
 
I don't agree. Any of those cameras could be tweaked more and produce 'nicer' pictures, but as a whole the tests showed a lot if you understand what you're looking at. They were nice enough to give us the specifics of the lens settings, etc.

No test is perfect, and if you've ever tried to do one you'll know that there is always a glitch, but as a general over view of three extremely good cameras this test was well worth viewing.

They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but a person can be happy having any one of these three cameras.
 
From your point of view (mine too) bang for the buck is the winner (I'll date the cheap little sister.) :grin:

Others value resolution over all else. Others view dynamic range, etc.

The other big selling point for me is upgradability. I can buy the F3 now and get many advantages with it, but if I get a bigger budget production I'm still golden. :thumbsup:
 
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