FS7: Current state of FS7-FS7 RAW vs FS700

G

Gary T

Well-known member
So I have shot a bit of RAW with the FS700 with great results and I am thinking using an FS5 or FS7 for an upcoming shoot to match the FS700. My only concern is that I have read scattered reports that suggest RAW on the FS7 or FS5 is inferior that on the FS700. Several complained of banding and other artifacts with the FS5 and FS7 when shooting RAW that were not present in the XAVC footage. I am not sure if these issues were widespread or if they have been resolved in an update so I thought I would ask here.

What are your experiences shooting RAW on the FS7 and FS5? It would especially be great to hear from anyone who has also shot with the FS700 who can give a direct comparison.

I realize how painful working with CinemaDNG can be but this workflow is fairly smooth for us. I also realize the internal codecs on both camera's are vastly superior to the AVCHD provided with the FS700 but for this application we are only interested in shooting RAW.

Thanks!
 
no experience sorry. I've only been shooting 16-bit RAW with F55. I'll eventually try RAW out on the FS5 as well, when I can get around to it.

But check these reports out:
FS7 RAW issues found: https://www.cinema5d.com/sony-fs7-raw-issues-found/
FS7 3.0 firmware fixes RAW issue: https://www.cinema5d.com/sony-fs7-firmware-update-30-released-fixes-raw-issues/

I don't really see any issues with the video below and there is a ton of black. Remember the problem is fitting 14 stops into 12-bit container, so the bottom is suppose to suffer the most with a linear gamma.. if you expose to the right (which is not necessarily the same as "overexposing" in my books) then you will put your data in the best place of the image signal and have improved results later in post. Lastly, many problems reported were when shooting very high frame rates, who knows what the camera was doing at that point which may have contributed to the issues…

https://vimeo.com/146398258
 
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Thanks Dennis. I did see those article but I appreciate your observations.

What has me curious is that I am still seeing a number of recent references here and elsewhere where some are saying the quality of the FS700 RAW is still superior to the FS7 and FS5. Makes me wonder if there might be a gotcha out there waiting for us.

What percentage of the time do you shoot RAW with your F55?

Thanks!
 
Hopefully someone who's shot RAW on both FS700 and FS5/7 can chime up for you. Otherwise why not ask a local dealer to do some tests in their space? They will usually welcome it with open arms, then you can compare for yourself. etc.

I'd say I shoot RAW the majority of the time now, but mostly because the work is either narrative or commercial. Later this month my production company is shooting a multi-camera concert and I'll be equipping the camera operators with FS7's and we'll shoot 4K XAVC. So really it all depends on the job. etc.
 
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