F65 Getting Cheaper

yachacha said:
I found 2 F65's at Sony's booth at NAB this year. One was on display like a museum relic, the other had been turned into a 4k broadcast giant. Maybe the sports systems using it as an 8k zoomable image will maintain the value of the f65. 8k raw!View attachment 86232
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This looks quite handholdable. Hmmm, have camera operators become all wimps? Doesn't look any bigger or heavier than Arricam.
 
SJX said:
This looks quite handholdable. Hmmm, have camera operators become all wimps? Doesn't look any bigger or heavier than Arricam.
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The F65 may be no heavier than an Alexa or an Arricam, but comparatively it's a dog to handhold. The weight distribution is just all wrong with that shoulder pad out the back-end. I tried it just with a lightweight Ultra Prime lens, and it was miserable even in that lightweight setup - it doesn't have a low centre of gravity and the dimensions (mainly the width of the body) are just not conducive to stable shoulder mounting iMO.

So I think the issue is less about the weight and more about the shape.
 
Grug said:
The F65 may be no heavier than an Alexa or an Arricam, but comparatively it's a dog to handhold. The weight distribution is just all wrong with that shoulder pad out the back-end. I tried it just with a lightweight Ultra Prime lens, and it was miserable even in that lightweight setup - it doesn't have a low centre of gravity and the dimensions (mainly the width of the body) are just not conducive to stable shoulder mounting iMO.

So I think the issue is less about the weight and more about the shape.
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That's what shoulder rigs are for. Most built in shoulder pads are useless. Arricam doesn't even have one. You can slide a shoulder rig to balance. But I have admittedly never picked up a F65.
 
The F65 suffers from pretty much the same maladies that riddle the F35 for shoulder use. Wide waddle body, high center of gravity and forward weight relative to lens and EVF placement. They can be worked around, but it's always nice when you don't have to work around such an odd duck design.
 
Panavision is developing a 70mm ccd camera, when that footage starts to show up I think we might find an adequate successor to the F35.
 
F35 is to Kodak Vision 2, as __ is to Kodak Vision 3. It's not the F65, we want finer grain, not none at all. When will a camera that builds on the strengths of the F35 exist? Does it already, Aaton Delta, a few probably made it into the European rental houses, I can't find any footage that's worthwhile to judge. Maybe Panavision is really working on a camera and it will blow everything else away with it's 70mm mojo, I have to trust the engineers at Panavision have the eye for magic beyond Sony or even Arri. The F65 will drop in price until they start showing up here, but the F65 is not an upgrade to the F35, it's more like an F55 upgrade. 20-30 F35 users will have 0 impact on the market and it could be a long time before we see a 4k output camera that does what the F35 does. Maybe an at home 4k 35mm scanner will become the next F35.
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My guess is there will be no next F35 (for Sony at least) period.

What it amazingly did in-camera we will probably not see in another Sony product for the rest of our lives.

Just consider that the market and landscape has transformed, and is not what it once was. Is anyone going to blow $250k plus on a camera that inherently spits out amazing images? Does anyone actually care about the quality when watching HD movies on 4" displays from iPhones, or 10kbps streaming video over the internet? I'd say its a pretty tough business case.

If you are going want this look in 4K any beyond you will need to embrace RAW, buy bigger hard drives and invest in NAS, and then learn how to professionally color and grade your images in post.
 
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That's the dilemma isn't it? Producers are all fascinated with buzzwords like "4K" and "RAW", but many things are being watched on poorer quality displays than ever before, or compressed so heavily all fine detail is lost
 
UK getting a slice of the action too ..



Location: United Kingdom
Seller status: Dealer
Condition: Used
Date Posted: 22/05/2014


Sony F65 + Accessories

Description: Sony F65 Body with Sony Color Viewfinder
Sony SR-R4 Digital Recorder
Sony SR-PC4 Data Transfer Unit
Sony SR-D1 (drag and drop)
Wireless adapter for tablet
Arri BP-9 Universal Baseplate
Anton Bauer Hot Swap Gold Mount
3x 512GB High Speed SRMemory Card
1x 256GB High Speed SRMemory Card
Includes camera case

Condition: Great Condition
Price: £20,000 + Vat



20,000.00 GBP = 33,667.37 USD
 
The biggest issue right now, and same issue as I see it with the F55, is that currently Sony does not offer variable compression of RAW images similar to how RED does.

For the F65 it means that 59 minutes of shooting time at 24fps will eat up 1TB. Sure you don't have to shoot RAW but to maximize the quality from the F65 you would probably want to, and then apply gamma and transcode in post to ProRes, etc..

I really do hope that Sony will consider adding compression ratios to the line up of firmware updates.
 
I think Sony's opinion is that if you want the full benefit of what the camera can do, you want uncompressed RAW. If you don't need it, then very high quality 1080P should serve your needs.

Personally, I think they're right... but sadly very few other people do.
 
It is always possible (but off the tradition map) to shoot raw then o/p to a friendly codec then delete the raw - at least you then get a chance to make your mistakes in the calm of the suite rather than on set.
 
The problem is then that you bake some gamma into that conversion process, thereby eliminating any possibility to apply an improved color science which could be released in the future. The concern is that you burn that Sony look in permanently without the flexibility of RAW later.

RED came out with newer and improved REDcolor and REDgamma years after the camera was released.

I suppose if it's transcoded to 12-bit 4444 ProRes you'd still have some muscle left in the "negative" but last time I checked 12-bit 4444 took more disk space than Sony RAW itself.
 
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JMtheDP said:
I think Sony's opinion is that if you want the full benefit of what the camera can do, you want uncompressed RAW. If you don't need it, then very high quality 1080P should serve your needs.

Personally, I think they're right... but sadly very few other people do.
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I thought Sony's raw is though? Isn't it 3:1 or 3.6:1 or something? I think it's only Arri, Blackmagic and Kineraw who are doing uncompressed raw at the moment. Having higher compression ratios available for raw recording would certainly be a great option to have.
 
If you use the R1 recorder deck you can record in 10-bit 444 and with an option record it in 12-bit. You can record in RGB as per Sony's SR codec, not RAW, but I did read that DNX uncompressed is an option. Also the R1 is limited to High Definition only. So assumingly with the R1 you would be forced to use one of the camera's built-in gammas which will get baked into the image format and along with the "Sony look". Perhaps slog3 gives some promise of reversing that out especially if using ACES workflow but you'd definitely want 12-bit not 10-bit to yield even more data in your highlights region.

At double the cost of an R1 step into the SR-R4 recorder and now you can do 4K double-bayer RAW in 16-bit (Q67 sensor data basically). The memory cards for the R4 are rated at 5.5gbps to give some idea of what's going on under the hood. $6000 for a 1TB card by the way. The R4 can also record in 2K RAW.

Here's Sony's literature on the R1, R4 and the F65: link
 
The real issue with the F65 has more to do with the reputation of Sony than the camera itself. A lot of people feel that it will be abandoned pretty soon. It never lived up to sales expectations and the F55 is eating into the market share of it's older sibling. That is why the price is coming down. As we all know, when Sony forgets a camera, they really forget it. So, that's a big chunk of change to make a bet on.
 
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I think the F65 has its place, just probably not with 99% of any of us here. Although I'd love to see someone tinker with it and make some pretty footage with it. It's got to be good for something I would think?! :)
 
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