F35 sharper than Alexa?

V

VinceinLA

Carbonite Member
Has anyone done or seen a test to see if the perceivable sharpness of the F35 is better than the Alexa and or Red? It came to mind tonight after seeing the new X-men movie, which was very, very good, but it seemed a little soft overall. I was close to the screen and it was a Sony 4K projector.
 
Assuming all else is equal, it wouldn't surprise me for that to be the case. The F35 does have double the pixels on its sensor.

It is conceivable the ALEXA in ARRIRAW could measure up ever so slightly better, but I have compared footage between the two and it is too close to call.
 
I too feel the Alexa is soft when seeing films in theater. The Avengers looked quite soft to me, as did the last James Bond... again, when sitting close up in theater.
 
F35 has higher resolution sensor than all minus Epic and F65. So is possible F35 is sharper than Alexa and F55.
 
Id love to test this out: http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/teranexexpress

Run some sharp f35 footage through it and see what comes out the 4K side. BTW- This terranex tech used to be hundreds of thousands of dollars before Black magic acquired it, I saw a feature doc called Iraq in Fragments (35mm film out from dvx100) They used the old version of this and it really made a huge difference in Resolution with that SD->2K->35mm print, I have a feeling this might see the same huge benefit.
 
Hunter I brought up the terranex converter in another thread, I think the one downside was that it's limited to 10 bit. My feeling was to start with 12 bit 444 as the most information to create the 4k file. Wouldn't a small terranex box that you can stick on the side of the F35 and create a 4k file on the fly to the 7Q be killer for 4k hungry producers.
 
yachacha said:
Hunter I brought up the terranex converter in another thread, I think the one downside was that it's limited to 10 bit. My feeling was to start with 12 bit 444 as the most information to create the 4k file. Wouldn't a small terranex box that you can stick on the side of the F35 and create a 4k file on the fly to the 7Q be killer for 4k hungry producers.
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Hell - the O7Q might even have enough horsepower in itself to do a pretty awesome 4K up convert. Probably not high on their feature list, but they should consider it as I'm sure it would breath 4k life into all sorts of other HD cams if they can just strap a recorder on and spit out a halfway decent hardware unconverted 4k file (F3, F35, C300, etc, etc.)

I would get pretty excited about that. And yeah it would be nice if it could tap into the full 12bit of the F35 signal.
 
VinceinLA said:
I was close to the screen and it was a Sony 4K projector.
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Just because the projector can handle 4k, doesn't mean it was given 4k. The vast majority of DCPs are 2k. That said, the only advantage to 4k would be in the first few rows of the theater. Even the front half of the middle of the theater doesn't gain anything from a 4k source. This from Sony's published white paper on the subject.

That said, there's a heck of a lot more to an image than just simple resolution.
 
I'm fully aware of all of that Bruce, as I'm sure most others are who bother to read professional cine camera forums. Let's assume a certain level of experience here.

This is the second feature where the Alexa softness stood out to me in a big theater and I'm usually at least 4 rows back. I don't recall having noticed this as much when I was looking at Genesis films or the few F35 ones I've seen. I feel like 35mm film and 5K CCD's still have an edge, with everything else being equal, when it comes to sharp looking yet aesthetically pleasing pictures.
 
VinceinLA said:
I'm fully aware of all of that Bruce, as I'm sure most others are who bother to read professional cine camera forums. Let's assume a certain level of experience here.
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I think it's entirely fair to make the point Bruce did, and personally I'm not sure that everyone who reads professional cine forums understands this. Certainly, a number of producers don't - and are overridding the decisions their DP's would otherwise make. And producers do lurk on places like dvxuser and reduser from time to time.

One thing RED did right was propoganda and PR. Alexas are used by true high end productions, but low and mid-range productions are frequently in the cult of RED. Which isn't to say that the RED doesn't have some excellent qualities, but that producers ask for RED like they're choosing Oreos over Hydrox.

For many people, from producers to DPs to Videographers to even some editors and colorists seem to be of the mindset that "4k = Better" with some assumption that if they acquire 4k, it stays 4k. But as a majority of us in the F35 forum know, this isn't necessarily true - films acquired in 4k are frequently DI processed at 2k, and DCP'ed at 2k, and projected at 1080p or 2k.

What's even crazier to me about this resolution war is that for talking head pieces with pretty faces, the sharper and more resolute the cameras get, the more filtration DPs are obliged to put in front of the lens to get rid of all the detail the extra pixels got them. Should we really want to shoot closeups of aging starlets in 4k or, god forbid, 8k?

And the bottom line is we're all doing this to ourselves. The audiences don't care at this point. They're not asking whether it was shot on RED or film or the Genesis, or whether they're watching a 4k DCP or a 2k DCP.
 
Oblivion = posted in 2K
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 = All SFX (half the film) finished in 2K
Prometheus = Finished in 2K

These are just a couple of examples that spring to mind. I do hate people extolling the virtues of 4K when the reality is still so little is 4K
 
Actually in my mind the most criminal bit of the hobbit is the "barrel" sequence in the second one, when they suddenly go to a GoPro or similar for a couple of shots.

I cannot understand why a production of that budget, with a director who is so in love with the RED, suddenly uses a GoPro for a shot I'm certain they could have achieved with the epic. Otherwise, what is the point of such a small camera?
 
I think even if alexa is finished more than 2K F35 can still look sharper. Alexa looks soft.
 
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