FS7: FS7 successor (rumours/expectations)

Global shutter is the biggest reason that I went with an F55 over an F5. I hate flash-banding(shoot around still photogs a lot) and I shoot a ton of sports. No matter how many times I've seen it, I still can't stand flash banding and can't fully understand how professionals just brush it off as no big deal.
 
In post though there is not really too much excuse for not fixing flash banding when you have a number of plugins that can fix most problems pretty quickly. Such as NewBlue's Flash Remover Pro. I've had pretty good results with it. Being an OFX plugin it runs well in Resolve for example. Even the free Sony Catalyst Browse can do flash band correction on MXF files. Sony's Content Browser v2.0 can also detect fix Sony camera files that have flash banding. It's great to use when ingesting clips prior to editing.

https://www.lynda.com/After-Effects...lashes-Flash-Remover-Pro/490767/515079-4.html

Chris Young
 
I didn’t know CB had that function. Thanks for the tip.

Not an issue I’ve had to fix recently - but good to know something exists.

Ben.
 
cyvideo said:
In post though there is not really too much excuse for not fixing flash banding when you have a number of plugins that can fix most problems pretty quickly. Such as NewBlue's Flash Remover Pro. I've had pretty good results with it. Being an OFX plugin it runs well in Resolve for example. Even the free Sony Catalyst Browse can do flash band correction on MXF files. Sony's Content Browser v2.0 can also detect fix Sony camera files that have flash banding. It's great to use when ingesting clips prior to editing.

https://www.lynda.com/After-Effects...lashes-Flash-Remover-Pro/490767/515079-4.html

Chris Young
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Wow, Flash Remover Pro looks like a beautiful solution, and they also have a FCPX version. NewBlue lists it as a legacy product so I'm definitely going to pick this one up in case they stop offering it. Thanks for sharing!
 
Gary T said:
Wow, Flash Remover Pro looks like a beautiful solution, and they also have a FCPX version. NewBlue lists it as a legacy product so I'm definitely going to pick this one up in case they stop offering it. Thanks for sharing!
Click to expand...

I guess it's a bit like when we first started shooting with the 500 pixel width CCD cameras, Sony DXC3000, BVP-50 etc which exhibited a horrible red vertical smear on bright lights. Compared to tube cameras it looked horrific. As the CCD cameras developed and pixel counts went up, like a 1000 pixel blocks the smear became a vertical thin white line and nobody except old tube shooters worried about it. Later still the smear almost disappeared. NewBlue's Flash Remover plugin is probably becoming legacy because probably nobody is buying it because as someone said so many productions now seem to just accept flash bands as part of filming life and don't bother to fix them. A short time back I saw a Ford TVC for one of their new SVUs. Pulling up at a showbiz event the vehicle was all flash band city. Obviously it didn't worry anyone on that TV ad campaign. Newbies don't even comment on it when I've asked is there anything in this vision that you think should be fixed. Acceptance marches on if no one is aware of the past. I have a beautiful old bakelite phone with a rotary dial in the lounge room. Still works. Some kids were visiting with young neighbors and asked what is that pointing to the phone. I told them it was a telephone. I had to laugh when they tried were pressing into the rotary dial holes expecting numbers to be dialed. No knowledge of the past. Ask most younger shooters about CCD vertical smear and they ask "What's that?"

Chris Young.
 
"Cynthia - you really are describing the F55"

Hi Morgan, you're absolutely right, ha.

Well, I'd be really happy to upgrade with a new screaming fast processor on board that can handle a Global Shutter properly.
Forget a new codec, (XAVC codec limit at 4K is 60p) stay 4K, Stay 10-bit (to keep F5 & F55 sales on going)
Definitely Stay super-35 Sensor Size, but...

1. Global Shutter
2. Dual ISO Recording
3. Advanced Autofocus adding Face & Eye Detection
4. Sound Recording during Slow Motion
5. Ability to adjust audio levels on Audio Channel 3 & 4
6. Add a few inches to the viewfinder cable length, (or offer an extension cable product)
7. Add the LUT name to the viewfinder, (this could be done now with firmware?)
8. Add a 1/4-20 female thread to the bottom of the viewfinder for gimbal mounting etc.
9. More robust main power switch

Something I haven't heard discussed is Speed Ramping while maintaining the same exposure.
I'd think it would be fairly trivial with the variable ND system.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for Sony would be implementing it in the menu system?
 
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Cynthia Webster said:
Something I haven't heard discussed is Speed Ramping while maintaining the same exposure.
I'd think it would be fairly trivial with the variable ND system.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for Sony would be implementing it in the menu system?
Click to expand...

I have a feeling that considering all the elements that go into the process it might not be that trivial -- plus you'd probably need to use some new RM controller system to do the ramping.
I haven't run across a lot of demand for the feature. Last time I did a speed ramp I was still shooting on film -- and we lit the spot with a Unilux strobe system (sync'd to the camera's shutter) to maintain consistent exposure.
I thought most speed ramps these days were done by shooting at a HFR in the camera and then adjusting the play speed and adding motion blur in post...
 
One of the biggest reasons why Sony is losing sales to Canon is DPAF. Once they'll implement AF equivalent in their pro/semi-pro line up (and they have all the bits and pieces) they'll have another big winner.
 
alohype said:
One of the biggest reasons why Sony is losing sales to Canon is DPAF. Once they'll implement AF equivalent in their pro/semi-pro line up (and they have all the bits and pieces) they'll have another big winner.
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Sony's AI aided AF on the consumer/low pro level (from A6400 to A9) are top notch. If it's absent on their pro line, it's an intentional omission.
 
DLD said:
Sony's AI aided AF on the consumer/low pro level (from A6400 to A9) are top notch. If it's absent on their pro line, it's an intentional omission.
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I don't think it's an intentional omission. It's just a product cycle. Sony started to have really good AF Sony only form A7RII. FS5 and FS7 are using older sensors from times when their AF was sh*te.
I'm very certain next-gen Sony pro line up will have much better AF, this will also boost lens sales, win-win for Sony.
 
DLD said:
Sony's AI aided AF on the consumer/low pro level (from A6400 to A9) are top notch. If it's absent on their pro line, it's an intentional omission.
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Works exceedingly well on their little Z90. If it comes to their higher end cameras I think it would go down well.

Chris Young
 
OnSet said:
I have a feeling that considering all the elements that go into the process it might not be that trivial -- plus you'd probably need to use some new RM controller system to do the ramping.
I haven't run across a lot of demand for the feature. Last time I did a speed ramp I was still shooting on film -- and we lit the spot with a Unilux strobe system (sync'd to the camera's shutter) to maintain consistent exposure.
I thought most speed ramps these days were done by shooting at a HFR in the camera and then adjusting the play speed and adding motion blur in post...
Click to expand...

With VariCams you can speed ramp in real time in-camera(4-60 with tape and 1-60 with P2) and the easiest way to maintain exposure was to just lock the shutter speed to the fastest you’d need it/want it for the highest frame speed.
 
Run&Gun said:
With VariCams you can speed ramp in real time in-camera(4-60 with tape and 1-60 with P2) and the easiest way to maintain exposure was to just lock the shutter speed to the fastest you’d need it/want it for the highest frame speed.
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I never realized that -- didn't shoot that much with the Varicams. Was it easy to change in-camera while rolling? Did you need to keep a menu open? Accomplish it with the rotary menu dial?

Of course on a tech level -- as I recall the tape varicams (at least here in the US) always recorded 60 frames/second - and then 'threw away' the frames that weren't being used when it was played back. So presumably the speed ramping was telling the camera/recorder which frames to keep? Or do I have that wrong? If you tried playing it back in camera would it show you the speed ramp? Or was it just metadata that went to the NLE -- which would mean that you could do the same ramp in post?
Do the P2 Varicams play it back properly in camera to check it? (I'm guessing that they should be able to - though I don't have a sense of how the P2 recording data would be structured...)
 
Liam Hall said:
I'm guessing he mentioned that because of stills guys/girls using flash at the same time.
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Yes correct .. a lot of flashes going off.. looks weird on non global shutter.. but you see in big budget movies now.. audiences have come to accept what used to be some big "problem" even shooting promo videos ..
 
cyvideo said:
Works exceedingly well on their little Z90. If it comes to their higher end cameras I think it would go down well.
Click to expand...

The Z90 has a dedicated fixed lens, how would this work for their higher end cine cameras ? ( interchangeable dedicated power zooms with AF motors ? )
 
A couple of thoughts on flash.. from someone whos done a lot of stills!

1) In 2000AD flash powers were exposing in the stills cam for 100ISO, maybe F8, today typically a location shoot will be 800/F4 , 1/16 of the size of the flash.

2) in a big budget your 'actor photographers' would minimise the power of their prop flashes as they don't need to take real photos unless they form part of the script later or even get a led rigged into the flash gun and flash for 1/50th, not 1/500th.

The flash band today is nothing like the flash band of 2000

In our studio we have 500w/s flashes and they are mainly problematically bright even for stills.

Id still want global mainly for rock gig light shows, which do have extreme bright flashes.
 
OnSet said:
I never realized that -- didn't shoot that much with the Varicams. Was it easy to change in-camera while rolling? Did you need to keep a menu open? Accomplish it with the rotary menu dial?

Of course on a tech level -- as I recall the tape varicams (at least here in the US) always recorded 60 frames/second - and then 'threw away' the frames that weren't being used when it was played back. So presumably the speed ramping was telling the camera/recorder which frames to keep? Or do I have that wrong? If you tried playing it back in camera would it show you the speed ramp? Or was it just metadata that went to the NLE -- which would mean that you could do the same ramp in post?
Do the P2 Varicams play it back properly in camera to check it? (I'm guessing that they should be able to - though I don't have a sense of how the P2 recording data would be structured...)
Click to expand...

With the tape version there were two buttons to run up and down through the frame rate once activated and you could also do it(more easily) with an attached remote control panel. And yes, the tape was always running at a constant 60fps, the camera would just do a pull-down internally. So when you did shoot slow-mo or other off-speed footage, it had to be done in post to playback properly. If you shot 60 for slow-mo, it would just playback as regular 60p(real-time video). With P2, however, it would playback straight out of camera correctly(i.e: shooting 60fps with 24 fps base frame rate resulted in 2.5x slow-mo playing back correctly). Only the correct frames were recorded. As a bonus, you got a huge increase in record time when shooting 24p vs. 60p.
 
seems like i never see anyone mention on-board image stabilization in these tea leaf-reading threads, while i can imagine few more useful functions in a camera so commonly used with a huge variety of lenses. while its exclusion probably bolsters the market for native e-mount gear, there can't be much of a technical/mechanical impediment to its integration into a camera body....
 
TheDingo said:
The Z90 has a dedicated fixed lens, how would this work for their higher end cine cameras ? ( interchangeable dedicated power zooms with AF motors ? )
Click to expand...

I'm finding the same focusing tech that is in the Z90 is working very accurately and pretty fast on my A7III with Sony's 28-135mm and 18-110mm interchangeable servo stabilized lenses in both FF and crop so I guess that sort of Hybrid AF on an upgraded S35 third gen BSI Stacked Sensor on the FS7 Mk xxx? would be something I would consider fairly useful in certain situations. Even the old 18-200mm 11 x servo zoom with 'Active' stabilization works very well on the A7III's Hybrid focus. Again pretty quick and as stable as a rock at 11 x zoom. Still rock solid and quick focusing with 2 x Clear Image at 22x zoom. Never thought that I an old school film manual everything shooter would say this about AF but I just have:)

The 28-135, not my favorite and the 18-110, much much the better of the two lenses both work on the A7III in the same manner as shown in the two following clips. The cameras in these two Sony clips use exactly the same Hybrid AF as the Z90.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2cQwghjIQk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YzqlNZk97o

Here is a more real world example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DT3fRzCnoo

This sort of auto focus on an FS7 with lenses that can work with it would tempt me for sure.

EDIT: Just remembered Doug Jensen did a demo on the Z90's Hybrid AF. Check his comments under this clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5dHmNSLQFA

Chris Young
 
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