F35 in 20's vs modern cameras

[Grug]

My plot is about adventures of three friends, from childhood to youth. The first part is from beginning of 1990's (late USSR) and I think that F35's look will be perfect for giving a nostalgic charm. I don't like big amounts of noise/grain, so it would be some reducing in post with the simultaneously adding to a7siii footage. I think that 99,99% of scenes I'll shot with the main camera. I need a7siii/c300iii/r5 only for some shots I've never seen before and the modern AF will help me a lot. All the shots from a b-cam should be very dynamical with the fast editing so i think not many viewers could recognise the difference.

The F35 is not going to give any kind of "nostalgic" or "vintage" vibe. Don't let its age fool you - it's a sharp, clean and detailed modern camera. There's more texture in the midtones than you'll get on more modern cameras, but that's about it. You'll have to look to lensing and filtration for if you want to add some nostalgia to the look of the film.

For 'Ghost', which I shot on some beat-up old Superspeeds, we got some lovely, softer contrast from the lenses (which worked really well for that film), but for a couple of longer shots, where I had to drop my 70-200mm Zeiss CZ.2 on the camera - the look changed entirely. Contrast shot WAY up, and it took quite a bit of work in the grade to massage those shots back to where the Superspeeds were sitting.

Vintage is not a look the F35 will give you.

I shouldn't put a7siii on rig - this is a gimbal solution for a some dynamic scenes and underwater shots (housing will be much cheaper than for cine bodies)

Ah, gotcha. Well that is what it is. At least they've got 10-bit and the newer colour science on the A7Siii, should be the first of the A7 cameras that's able to generate an image you can properly match in with an A-camera.

Agree, the formfactor and specs of C300iii - the best I've seen, but as I said there no any good footage from it. Very strange because camera have been shipped 3 months ago. Even the Komodo looks better with it's global shutter and really nice image rendering with better handling of highlights. But it's ergonomics - one of weirdest things on the market: too small for a cinema camera, too powerful for being allarounder, needs tons of accesoires to being a real beast, no separate recording as well.

I thought this looked pretty great:

Thanks, very nice looking for a documentary, but the almost every shot is night or cloudy day. I plan to start filming at spring, so have amount of time for a research. For today I'm going with an F35+a7siii.

And these look just fine for sunny days:

I think that the best solution is Amira/XT but both are not afordable for me now. Renting of mini is also not the better solution imo.

I'm sure you could get a great deal renting an Alexa Classic these days. That'll be nicer than any Sony or Canon, and they just work - no fussing around.

 

[Guest]

The F35 is not going to give any kind of "nostalgic" or "vintage" vibe. Don't let its age fool you - it's a sharp, clean and detailed modern camera. There's more texture in the midtones than you'll get on more modern cameras, but that's about it. You'll have to look to lensing and filtration for if you want to add some nostalgia to the look of the film.

A part of me disagrees with this. Obviously, it is digital and therefore a very static and clean image compared to film, but there is a quality in the way it captures light that lends itself to something more natural looking in certain circumstances. So, while I agree with you, there is also no issue with saying it helps in giving a vintage look, if the person saying it is talking about something organic and analogue feeling.

 

[DM_R]

The F35 is not going to give any kind of "nostalgic" or "vintage" vibe. Don't let its age fool you - it's a sharp, clean and detailed modern camera. There's more texture in the midtones than you'll get on more modern cameras, but that's about it. You'll have to look to lensing and filtration for if you want to add some nostalgia to the look of the film.

james said it for me

So, while I agree with you, there is also no issue with saying it helps in giving a vintage look, if the person saying it is talking about something organic and analogue feeling.

I told about the reach colors, halftones, wide range of highlights, narrow shadows. And with the right lenses (as you said), it will give me that vintage but very organic look.

For 'Ghost', which I shot on some beat-up old Superspeeds, we got some lovely, softer contrast from the lenses (which worked really well for that film), but for a couple of longer shots, where I had to drop my 70-200mm Zeiss CZ.2 on the camera - the look changed entirely. Contrast shot WAY up, and it took quite a bit of work in the grade to massage those shots back to where the Superspeeds were sitting.

Your Ghost is a true F35's masterpiece, real eye-candy. If you had to shoot it now, which cam would you choose between F35 and C300iii?
And which master primes were used: mk ii or iii?

I thought this looked pretty great:

And these look just fine for sunny days:

As for me - just OK. Typical modern sterilized look. First clip could be shot on everything: a73iii, s1h... The other ones have that special "canon mojo" from dslrs - high contrast, narrow highlights, reddish and warmish image overall. Superior for a documentaries, but not cinematic. Maybe top-rated gaffer and colorist will be able to produce a cinematic look with this tool, but F35 gives everything I like out from the box. Just interesting in your opinion.

I'm sure you could get a great deal renting an Alexa Classic these days. That'll be nicer than any Sony or Canon, and they just work - no fussing around.

There's no "classics" or amiras in my country for rent( Only "minis" and above. One month of renting Alexa Mini will cost me the same as the purchase F35+a7siii

 

[drboffa]

These aren't from the final grade (I've stripped them back to just some luminance/saturation curves for the sake of comparison), but it's the best A/B I could find.

This is the F35 (mid-shot) and the F3 (close-up). It's not easy to see thanks to the difference in frame sizing, but if you look to the mid-tones you'll see the difference in texture (and how much smoother the newer F3 looks by comparison):

The F35 is by no means objectionable (I certainly prefer the look it gets to the F3) but there's some "life" in the midtones that you won't see on a properly exposed image from a newer camera.

Thanks so much for sharing these really beautiful frames. I think both look fantastic, but I can definitely see the texture in the midtones of the F35.

If you don't mind my picking your brain a bit more: was this the F3's internal recording? And does the F3 have adjustable noise reduction? And have you played around with gain or rating the camera differently in an effort to bring out more texture/noise?

 

[Ben_Ericson]

As for me - just OK. Typical modern sterilized look. First clip could be shot on everything: a73iii, s1h... The other ones have that special "canon mojo" from dslrs - high contrast, narrow highlights, reddish and warmish image overall. Superior for a documentaries, but not cinematic. Maybe top-rated gaffer and colorist will be able to produce a cinematic look with this tool, but F35 gives everything I like out from the box. Just interesting in your opinion.

I really do believe the C300ii has a softness in the highlights and a skin tone look that the Mk3 does not produce. I've owned both the Sony F3 and the C300 Mk2. Both of those cameras produce great images but in my opinion the C300 has an advantage in mixed lighting. The C300ii also can do 12 bit @ 2k internally and dual slot back up recording.

This short film below looks great to me and quite a bit better than any Mk3 examples I have seen.

 

[DM_R]

This short film below looks great to me and quite a bit better than any Mk3 examples I have seen.

Thank you, Ben. I'm really impressed: halftone palette is reach, beatiful skintones with wide tonality, non-alexa but pretty enough in higlights.

If I saw something similar from c300iii, I've preordered it with no doubts. Considering that the C200 has a C300ii's sensor and is able to recover 4.5 stops over the key with built-in raw lite, It's a pretty nice option for a price.

 

[Grug]

Your Ghost is a true F35's masterpiece, real eye-candy. If you had to shoot it now, which cam would you choose between F35 and C300iii?
And which master primes were used: mk ii or iii?

Oh boy, you're digging up past traumas there

It'll be sacrilege to say on here, but the Producer and I actually fought the director tooth and nail to NOT use the F35 on Ghost. He was dead-set on it, but the Producer and I were just so stressed out about shooting down at the (literal) end of the earth (there's nothing else until you hit Antartica), and on the opposite side of the State from any kind of alternative or backup cameras.

It wasn't so much that I was worried about the F35 itself. I knew the pictures were great and the camera rugged, it was everything else I was worried about:

- The crappy SD viewfinder Sony made for it
- The beat-up Superspeeds we were using (which were way out of collimation - so the witness marks weren't accurate)
- External recording when we knew we were going to have surf spray, dust, rain and sand blasting at us all the time
- The Odyssey7Q (at 720p) being our only high-definition source to confirm focus.
- 400 ISO when we had a bunch of night scenes in the middle of nowhere with very a limited lighting package.

The Producer had a Varicam35 that she was willing to loan us so that we wouldn't have the complications of the F35, I offered my F5 + R5 to avoid the complications of the F35. Even the rental house offered us an Amira (simply so that they wouldn't have to try and get the F35 adequately rigged for us).

And ALL of those options would have been easier and more-appropriate cameras for the situation and shooting environments we were throwing ourselves into.

Ultimately, our Director held firm, and we packed the F35 in the van. But it wasn't without cost. The Odyssey died on day one, and with it went our ONLY option for HD monitoring. Fortunately, I'd packed my trusty PIX240 as a backup, and that trooped on for the rest of the shoot, but we had to record 4:2:2 instead of 4:4:4 (because it doesn't do dual-link), and because the PIX240 only had a standard definition screen, we had only SD monitoring to contend with a set of lenses that did not focus accurately - and we lost a couple of important shots in the edit to missed focus because of that.

Which was obviously pretty frustrating (if unavoidable given the circumstances). But we can't complain too much, the film came out alright in the end

So to answer your question... I suspect that (at heart) I'm more of a pragmatistic than a purist. But if a Director wants to choose the path of madness, I'll give them fair warning first, but then I'll follow them off the cliff.

The Superspeeds were Mark IIIs.

There's no "classics" or amiras in my country for rent( Only "minis" and above. One month of renting Alexa Mini will cost me the same as the purchase F35+a7siii

I'm not sure where you're based, but I'd ask around your local DoPs. There's surely at least one of them who's got a Classic sitting in the cupboard somewhere.

Thanks so much for sharing these really beautiful frames. I think both look fantastic, but I can definitely see the texture in the midtones of the F35.

If you don't mind my picking your brain a bit more: was this the F3's internal recording? And does the F3 have adjustable noise reduction? And have you played around with gain or rating the camera differently in an effort to bring out more texture/noise?

Those frames are from 12-bit and 10-bit ProRes4444 XQ masters (so as close to uncompressed as you can get without recording DPX). Tonnes of latitude to work with. The internal recording on the F3 is not viable for any kind of SLOG recording, it's a very thin 35Mbps 4:2:0 codec.

 

[DM_R]

Oh boy, you're digging up past traumas there

Sorry for getting them back and thank you for a detailed answer.
I'm in your boat and totally agree with your pragmatism considering all the difficulties with shooting conditions. You had so many options no worse than F35 if not better (Amira, F65) but in my case everything I can afford (<11K), loses to it in terms of image quality. I have a long 5 months for researching and brainstorming. Maybe an Arri will fall on my head for a good price, who knows

 

[Grug]

Sorry for getting them back and thank you for a detailed answer.
I'm in your boat and totally agree with your pragmatism considering all the difficulties with shooting conditions. You had so many options no worse than F35 if not better (Amira, F65) but in my case everything I can afford (<11K), loses to it in terms of image quality. I have a long 5 months for researching and brainstorming. Maybe an Arri will fall on my head for a good price, who knows

Good luck! I think an Alexa Classic would probably be your best bet, there's certainly a few around on eBay and the various marketplaces. Big thing is, you can get parts and accessories for it easily, and the recording/media is just SO much easier to deal with (than dealing with dual-link and flipping between modes on the O7Q).