F55: F5 VS F55 VS F65 - what should i get?

starcentral said:
Part II - comparing to Canon...

I've also shot quite a bit of work on the Canon (C100, C300, 5D mark III, and 7D) and in my opinion think they are "cleaner" when you start cranking the ISO. On the F55 I've shot a few things at 3200ISO and it's easy to see noise in your blacks so you have to either overexpose by 1-2 stops to increase the signal-to-noise ratio up from 57db to 63 - 69db but that means you are reducing your dynamic range from 14 stops to 12. Which as a side note means you can just as well shoot with HG7 which give you approximately the same range. ;) Of course you can always use a noise cleaner in post if you wish or have the time for it.

Being a Sony owner but Sony/Canon shooter I do feel that Canon is far more what I'd call a swiss army knife for video covering everything from budgeted commercial and cinema work (which the sony can do) to low-light doc work, or low budget or no-light indie projects, etc.. I've shot live events on Canon in 35mm and sometimes found them quite practical, the glass and fact it works electronically with the body is great!

I really did use to hate shooting on DSLR's but after being paid to DP a bunch of projects where all gear was provided and I was being asked to setup the camera profiles, lighting, etc.. once I did see the results I had absolutely no qualms with it and it really did open up my eyes.

Out of the box, I think Canon looks better than Sony. With Sony you're either using a custom scene profile, grading the image in post, or using some LUTs to get a better look. Some people like the Sony look however, so of course it depends on how you feel about it.

2 cents again.
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Were you using Custom Mode or Cine EI with 3200ISO? If you were in Cine EI, changing ISO does not reduce dynamic range, it's always 14 stops. The only thing that changes is the distribution of stops above and below neutral grey.
 
i wonder if there was posted anywhere a Few seconds of files , that were filmed with sony f5/55? would love to download a sec or two of compressed havc file as well as raw file, and try to play with it in davinci....
if any one would not mind to post it for download would be wonderful! or maybe if it was already posted you could drop me a link?

regards
 
marvinhello said:
Were you using Custom Mode or Cine EI with 3200ISO? If you were in Cine EI, changing ISO does not reduce dynamic range, it's always 14 stops. The only thing that changes is the distribution of stops above and below neutral grey.
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I've shot 3200 ISO in custom mode, and native ISO (1250 ISO) with no exposure index set in CineEI mode. I light for middle grey and also light my shadows most of the time so that the detail is preserved once shadows are reduced again later in post. Maybe the F55 is "noiser" than the F5? :huh:

anatusa said:
what is SR codec?
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It allows you to record in RGB 444 which is very high quality, excellent for green screen work and in general gives you more "data" to work with in color grading. It's still only 10-bit but its data rate is 440Mbps at 30p. That's quite high compared to XAVC in HD at 30p which is only 100Mbps.

SonyF5-F55-media-chart_zpsc9408fdf.png
 
So SR is for both cams and for F5 and For F55? and do i understand its right ? its on board? with out the needs of the external recorder? as there are so many options of the cards that i am now confused! or some of the SxS cards goes into external recorder?

also the 1000$ 4k upgrade for F5, is it up to 60p like on F55? and same bit rate? did not find the tech info about, sony website just says (Enables XAVC 4K and XAVC QFHD recording)
 
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I am shooting SR in CineEI mode, RGB444, with my F5. Gotta say it's pretty nice. It takes some care on importing into Media Composer, to be sure it comes in as RGB 444, but, it looks pretty good....and noticeably better colors on my studio monitor. The only drawback is that it's only 1080P, no 4K.
edit: OMG, the datarate at 4K would be mind-numbing
 
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The only thing wrong on that chart I posted is that the F5 now also does up to 180p not just 120p.

At 30p you're using 440Mbps in SR, compared to 100Mbps in XAVC at the same frame rate.
 
BTW i wonder if anyone used Sony warranty service? if the sensor/ or cam in general needs to be cleaned is it free or not?

As a c300 user , i sent my cam once for cleaning, and asked them to check the sensor. i payed nothing! not even for shipping! local service center took cam from me and they sent it to other country (we dont have locally pro service center)! They cleaned sensor, they installed 2 extra dust filters, they installed a new internal battery, they did a sensor check (there were no problems, as its turned out my monitor had problems!) - and i payed nothing at all. it was a nice surprise! there and back it took 5 business days total.
 
i read a few articles about problems with Slow Motion that F5/55 have.. , the last youtube video that i saw there was something about sensor binning (not sure how to spell it, and also not sure what does it mean) above certain frame rate..... seems like there is some kind off trick that sony does in order to achieve the fast motion. what is your experience with it?
 
The Sony's use pixel binning, ie. it groups 4 adjacent pixels and uses it as one. It's not really a "problem" or "fault" but rather the OLPF in the F5/F55 camera is designed for a 4K sensor with 4096 x 2160 pixels. If you effectively group 4 pixels into 1 new one then you would need a different OLPF, one that is really meant more for HD or 2K. Because of this Sony has made a swappable OLPF so you can replace the 4K OLPF with a 2K OLPF. It's around $800 for it, or $500 on the used market.

Pixel-binning happens at any frame rate over 60p.

I just wrote an article that talks about getting 360fps on the F55 camera which talks about the OLPF if you're interested to learn more: http://www.hingsberg.com/index.php/2015/01/360fps-on-the-sony-f55/
 
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In addition to what Dennis said I'll add that the whole drama people are creating about the quality of image over 60 frames is completely over blown. Yes if you shoot man made objects with well defined diagonal lines and playback frame by frame pixel-peeping with your nose to the screen, YES you may see some aliasing jaggies on those lines. But.. your the only person that ever will. Also, if punch in to center crop mode the "problem" will be resolved as your looking at and capturing a 1920x1080 only image, no binning etc.
 
^ agreed, it's not a "huge" deal at all. Without the OLPF you probably wouldn't notice it, especially once it gets compressed even further after going online. The only reason I bought the OLPF was 1.) because I got it for 1/2 price, 2.) I had a client who was worried about it and hired me to shoot 240fps and I just wanted reassurance on that shoot that nothing would go funny.

By the way there is one for sale on Sony forums for $500 right now if anyone is interested.
 
Yeah, what they ^^ said

High speed has always been a compromise on any camera except the phantoms etc. Even the F65 goes to half RAW above 60fps, also the C500, and the Red does up to 100 fps in full sensor, then has to "window/crop" for anything faster. To get 300fps on an epic, it crops the sensor to 2k, and although that's cool for alias/Moore/jaggies free, it's bigger pixels, bigger less fine grain, and a bit mushy.

Big ups to Sony, they actually gave us the option to shoot full sensor higher than 60 fps (albeit binned) as well as center crop. Red only have the centre crop option, reducing focal field of view, having to change lenses to match non high speed shots.

BTW Anat, my F5 kit for sale includes BOTH OLPF's (that's the 4k and 2k high speed OLPFs)
 
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