F5: F5 + AXS R5 or F55

D

DDirector

Veteran
In pre-production stages for a short film to be shot this winter.
I want to use the Sony camera in 4K.

I'm wondering if it would be better to get the F5 + the AXS R5 RAW recorder or shoot with the F55 internal 4K, non-raw.

I have the same debate for a future feature gig, and instead of renting this, Id rather buy the camera itself.
But, not sure which would be a better option.
 
Very hard one this.

I guess they cost about the same.

If you buy the 55 you can rent the recorder

If you buy the 5 and the recorder you never have a 55 !

If you buy the 5 and no recorder you can learn the camera use it on smaller projects and swap in a recorder and/or 55 as per your clients' budget.

Overall I would not spend $20+k without a booking in the bag.

Ie Id buy a 5 and rent extras (recorder and or 55) when clients need.. or if I had a booking that was contractually going to pay $10k plus in camera rental fees Id buy the 55

My only worry (reason to consider the 55) is Rolling Shutter on the 5, beyond that I see the 5 as doing 'enough'. I only worry about the rolling shutter in terms of being sent to a flicker hell pop festival. In that case I would just put it to the client .. you pay for renting the 55. And at a festival it might be good to be on a rental cam in case you laser the sensor!

S
 
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Get the F55. Rent the recorder for shoots that really require raw recording.

With it's global shutter the F55 is going to be relevant considerably longer than the F5 in this rapidly changing camera landscape.
 
Without knowing the details, obviously the F55 offers more in terms of extended color gamut and of course the rolling shutter - but you might find after doing some camera tests that the 4k XAVC with slog2 in 10-bit 422 stands up to what you need it to do in post vs. RAW 16-bit.

Get your hands on some footage or a camera and try some tests. If it were me I'd take F55 with XAVC over F5 with RAW anyday but that's just me.
 
I don't know. I just got the Aussie F5 bundle with camera, OLED VF, AXS-R5 recorder, 512gb ASX card, 128gb and 64gb SxS Pro+ cards, Olivine charger, two Olivine batteries, ASX and SxS USB3 readers for a few grand less than just the body-only price of an F55 (no VF). You want to buy the F55 just for global shutter? If you spend your life shooting NASCAR, press conferences and screamo concerts with gazillions of strobes lights, maybe... I don't think the F55 is worth the difference in the real world. If you shot a film on an F5 and F55, I'd love to have the post-grade differences pointed out to me.
 
My thoughts... I don't purchase cameras to shoot short films or even features. I rent the best camera available for the job which the budget will support.

I only purchase a new camera after a proper business evaluation. And a proper business evaluation is not asking an Internet forum which camera I should spend $25K + on. It's truly shocking how many people will spend huge amounts of money on new cameras they have never used, based on a low res Internet footage or the recommendation of an unknown person on the Internet who may or may not have real world experience with said gear. Not trying to knock anybody's reply here, because I know you are all trying to help. But for crying out loud Michael, a weekend rental would tell you everything you need to know about the camera and workflow, and whether it is right for the job. And don't tell me it is a low budget movie and you can't afford to rent a test camera for preproduction. If you can't afford a weekend camera rental for preproduction tests, then purchasing is likely a very poor financial decision.

Sorry, rant mode off.

Good luck with your projects!

Dave
 
We can talk about what differences we may or may not see after post till the cows come home but I'd say the life of the F55 goes long beyond shooting nascar races and paparazzi with high powered flashes.

Outside of traditional cinema or other HD/2k projects there is an emerging market for 4k live broadcast applications that the F55 is a perfect and suitable candidate for given its 4k live feed output capability.

If you're looking at a sub $20/$30k camera I certainly wouldn't rule this out as a potential revenue stream which with just a few jobs a year could easily subsidize the extra cost of the F55 over a 2-3 year period.
 
David W. Jones said:
My thoughts... I don't purchase cameras to shoot short films or even features. I rent the best camera available for the job which the budget will support.
Click to expand...

Now if a feature has a rental budget (contracted) and you could get a camera and instantly have big rental Maybe clear 30-50% of the cost of ownership in the first month (from that feature) that seems to make some sense?

As for a business case - I agree and it is personal and the skill of it is called 'business'.

S
 
Its like this...
we are in pre-production on shooting a feature.

Renting the F5 will be practically the same as buying one new.
Thats why Im thinking of just buying the F5 + the R5 or thinking if it would be best to pitch in a little bit more $$ and just buy an F55.

We want to shoot 4K as this will be seen in theaters/film festivals.
We've shot all of our films in 4K and would love to continue it. Its just the RAW and Global Shutter difference.
 
I would be doing the same thing Michael if I were in your shoes. I would take that rental budget moneys and slap it towards the purchase of a camera and pay the difference out of your pocket. Remember, worst case scenario you can always SELL the camera if in the end for whatever reason you don't want to keep it and you will still come out ahead and have made money.

ie. Buy F5 for $20k, get $10k (or more) to shoot feature, pay difference of $10k out of pocket. After the feature decide to either keep the F5 or sell it. It will be worth 80%-85% of what it cost you new so if you sell it you will actually pocket $7000. Also setup a HST # (for Ontario) and get the taxes you paid on it back too while you're at it.
 
starcentral said:
We can talk about what differences we may or may not see after post till the cows come home but I'd say the life of the F55 goes long beyond shooting nascar races and paparazzi with high powered flashes.
Click to expand...

Hi Dennis, my comments were not directed at your post but intended for the OP. I think you posted minutes before me so it looked like I was responding to you! The 4K live thing is a real consideration, and if I was in that world or had a rental market for that, I would have definitely considered the F55. For Michael and his movie, I would go for the F5 and Raw recorder as the Raw will give him more flexibility in post. If he goes F55, depending on the difficulty of location shooting/lighting he encounters, the internal 4K recordings may not cope with a heavy corrective or artistic grade. And yes, buy the kit if possible and rent it back to the production. Personally I would have bought the F55, but the dollar difference once kitted out with all the bits made the gap too large.
 
Admit One said:
No one seems to be worrying too much about global shutter when shooting with an Alexa. I've yet to have a problem with the F5. Cheers.
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My understanding was that the Alexa uses a rotary mirror in front of the sensor which gives a global shutter effect, but I'm not sure if that applies to all the Alexa models.
 
powervideo said:
My understanding was that the Alexa uses a rotary mirror in front of the sensor which gives a global shutter effect, but I'm not sure if that applies to all the Alexa models.
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No. Only one Alexa model has a shutter, and that's the Studio. And compared to regular Alexa EVs out there, there are very few of them in the wild.
 
Assuming you need only 2 AXS cards for the Raw recorder as Im not sure how many you'd really need shooting 4K raw.
It's roughly a $2-3 thousand dollar difference.

So, if its best to sacrifice Raw for Global Shutter for an additional $2-3K, then its best to get the F55. But if Raw is the better choice, then the F5 and the recorder would be best suited.
*Also adding the extended colour gamut on the F55

I do watch a lot of movies and wonder how some shots have been pulled off with cameras without the global shutter.
Such things as fast dolly moves where you obviously would see the image skew or some other things like flashes going, lightning, and other things... when shot digitally (like Red) and not on film.

For example, I just got back from the theater seeing Elysium. Now watching behind the scenes and finding out that it was shot on the Red Epic.
So, scenes like this seen @2:50, how do they not capture the half exposed frames from the strobe lights and explosions on camera?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ4zdDtbvmg
 
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You get around 60mins of 4K Raw on the 512K card. I would have liked two cards, but they are a bit exxie. If you are shooting a low-budget film, you could get away with two cards. We've done heaps of fast sports stuff for commercials with the F3, and we've never noticed rolling shutter issues that would make any difference to the broadcast result. I mean if you wanted to watch a TVC through frame-by-frame you may see something.
 
DDirector said:
For example, I just got back from the theater seeing Elysium. Now watching behind the scenes and finding out that it was shot on the Red Epic.
So, scenes like this seen @2:50, how do they not capture the half exposed frames from the strobe lights and explosions on camera?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ4zdDtbvmg
Click to expand...

Those lights aren't really strobe lights. They're LED units and if you step through, each one is on for a few frames each "flash".

It's flash durations measured in single digit milliseconds (usually from xenon-based strobes) that are the problem.

Gun muzzle flash is another issue though. I expect a lot of that is usually augmented for impact by FX in post so it looks better, so if it's captured halfway, it's not such a big deal.

Rolling shutter is rarely a big deal in practice, been shooting since 2008 with cameras susceptible to it, only maybe 3 times have I even noticed it, and only once has it been a problem (with LED based stage lighting).
 
DDirector said:
Assuming you ..

So, if its best to sacrifice Raw for Global Shutter for an additional $2-3K, ..
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I think you need to see a broader picture in terms of investment than your film (which will probably look great with any combo)

For example say you end up owning a F5 and looking to rent it out, but the local rental house has a F55 at 25% more money.. Id take the 55 for my rental not your 5 to save a few bucks and maybe everyone else would too!

Now that could seriously compromise the total rental income of your camera during its life

The total cost of a camera is..
Cost plus life insurance/maintenance minus (rental income/additional owner op fees + final sale price)

I know even having a built 55 in my office would impact badly on my insurance

It is a hard sum to do considering the 'known unknowns'

S
 
QUOTE: "So, if its best to sacrifice Raw for Global Shutter for an additional $2-3K, then its best to get the F55. But if Raw is the better choice, then the F5 and the recorder would be best suited.
*Also adding the extended colour gamut on the F55..."

Just wondering how you determined the "$2-3K" difference? Considering the currently available Sony F5 package (F5, hard case, EVF, 32gig card, battery& charger,Canon adapter...) for $19,500 and then adding the same–mostly necessary— accessories to the F55 body, you come up with an almost $15,000 difference. Adding the R5 recorder to both cameras maintains the same differential.
 
DDirector said:
So, if its best to sacrifice Raw for Global Shutter for an additional $2-3K, then its best to get the F55. But if Raw is the better choice, then the F5 and the recorder would be best suited.
*Also adding the extended colour gamut on the F55
Click to expand...

global shutter for the purpose of "fast lights" is probably not the best example of where GS excels. GS is great for VFX work (but again hasn't really been a problem without it) but also has a unique look of its own that you notice when there is a lot of motion in the frame. Its a lot more representative of the film judder motion you would get shooting on actual film.

Here's a test I shot with a 500mm lens on the F55, you can "feel" there is just something different about the motion in the footage.

https://vimeo.com/61595452


Whether to sacrifice RAW for GS is a tough call, but you probably wont miss GS in the end and I'd call it more of a "nice to have".
 
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