FS700 in 2018?

IronFilm said:
Years ago I asked:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?338057-Is-a-Sony-F3-worthwhile-buying-in-2015

I ended up going ahead and buying it! In hindsight that was absolutely the right decision for me, no regrets!

The old F3 to this day is still seeing usage! Just wrapped up a weekend of shooting with *two* of them side by side, for a feature film I'm being DoP for:



But now I am starting to wonder, shall 2018 be the year I move on from it?

What do people think of the Sony FS700 in the current marketplace as relevant in 2018 vs similar priced 4K competitors? Because with its price on eBay at around US$1.5K (or less! :-o ) it is extremely appealing, in fact I think I'd buy it asap if not for a couple of drawbacks:

#1: no time code.

#2: needs a large bulky power sucking 7" monitor/recorder. (I see Atomos will be shipping soon the Ninja V, if only they had a SDI version that might be *perfect* for me!)



A secondhand URSA Mini 4K is around the same ish price as a FS700 + Recorder, but I really don't like the BMD 4K sensor. (Ditto doing a RED ONE MX for around the same price, no thanks!)

A secondhand Canon C500 / Sony FS5 / URSA Mini 4.6K / Kinefinity KineMAX 6K are all other possible possibilities as well, but would come at a significant price leap vs a FS700.
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I must add another drawback. Dynamic range. Some people are saying 10 stops, others say 12 stops and others say 14 stops. 14 I doubt. Alexa is 14 stops. But if only 10 stops sucks then. I think F3 has more than this?

I'm also considering FS700. Undecided between FS700 with booster or one of sony mirrorless full frame.
 
SJX said:
I must add another drawback. Dynamic range. Some people are saying 10 stops, others say 12 stops and others say 14 stops. 14 I doubt. Alexa is 14 stops. But if only 10 stops sucks then. I think F3 has more than this?
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No way has the FS700 only 10 stops.

I suspect the F3 might have a little more? But I really have no idea, guess it might still be quite close. Wish I could find a good test of them head to head!

SJX said:
I'm also considering FS700. Undecided between FS700 with booster or one of sony mirrorless full frame.
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Yeah they're both the same price! More or less.

But the FS700 clearly has more features.
 
IMG_5500.jpg

SJX,
Rating a camera is not necessarily assessing the total DR a camera is capable of capturing. Rating a camera is more subjective. In the image above, you see a scale of stacked 0.6 NDs, so that every square is 2 stops. The top section and the false colors it's possible to see 6 squares after the white. On the WFM 5 distinct notches are clearly visible, with the 5th notch from the top falling at 20IRE. That means that the camera sees 8/10 stops above 20 IRE. A basic understanding of cameras and WFM would let you know that it doesn't mean the camera doesn't see anything below 20 IRE. There are a few more stops of DR below 20 IRE. As such, the camera is capable of capturing more than 10 stops of DR. In my test, around 12 stops, but this test isn't scientific enough for me to make any official claims about max DR captured. But the lowest few stops are highly compressed. Also, the noise floor of the FS700 (in my opinion), really creeps in at 20IRE heavy. As such, the remaining stops of DR below 20 IRE, in my opinion, are too compressed and too noisy to give me the fidelity and the color quality that I want out of the image in post. As such, I rate the camera as 10 stops. That is my personal rating of what the camera can give me at the quality I want. So I light scenes for less than 10 stops. And that is shooting RAW.

I love the FS700 RAW for the price. It really punches above its weight and I'm really happy with it. But this is my approach to using it. Again, just because I rate it as such, doesn't mean anyone has to. I posted the image because it speaks for itself and you can gather your own opinions from it. The only thing you can't tell is the way the grain moves. But on the false color you can see how blotchy the transition from blue to purple is.

I hope this helps, and I highly recommend anyone interested in purchasing a FS700 to rent one or borrow one from a friend and test it for themselves. Everyone has different needs and benchmarks for what is acceptable in an image. For me, the top 10 stops are what give me an acceptable image for me. Below that, not so much. But others may feel differently and that's totally cool :)
 
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With the 6 and a bit years of FS700 under my belt, the FS700 legacy is nearing an end as I now have a down payment on a Kinefinity Mavo. I'm going to be posting my final few FS700/Odyssey7Q videos over the coming few weeks. Here is a new piece I recently produced for those interested:

https://vimeo.com/282357741
 
I've been loving your work Chester on Vimeo with the FS700!

I'll probably be a generation behind you :) Getting the FS700 soon? But wanting the MAVO in the future!
 
boosh said:
With the 6 and a bit years of FS700 under my belt, the FS700 legacy is nearing an end as I now have a down payment on a Kinefinity Mavo.
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And then FS700 becomes crap I presume?

Kidding but many people are like this. Defend camera when have but after sell say the camera was always crap. LOL. :grin:


boosh said:
I'm going to be posting my final few FS700/Odyssey7Q videos over the coming few weeks. Here is a new piece I recently produced for those interested:

https://vimeo.com/282357741
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Looks great. The english overcast days sure make those 10 stops look more like 13 or 14 stops doesn't it. :laugh:

I can't believe this camera is only 10 stops and do this.
 
SJX said:
Looks great. The english overcast days sure make those 10 stops look more like 13 or 14 stops doesn't it. :laugh:

I can't believe this camera is only 10 stops and do this.
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There is a review on Provideo Coalition from a few years ago.
You can check it out and see that they measured much more than
10 stops. They said 14 stops (more like 12 actual.) Its a pretty
detailed review.
 
Boosh, your work is amazing. I have a question for you about picture profiles on the FS700 - when shooting in SLOG2, what do you set the color mode to? Mine stays on cinema all the time. Does that even make a difference when recording to the Odyssey?
 
Hi Kaidumo, mine is just set to cinema. I've never really experimented to be fair but the standard Slog2 has always worked well for me
 
https://www.eoshd.com/2012/07/sony-...ncredible-14-stops-of-dynamic-range-in-avchd/


Sony FS700 – the image quality verdict – incredible 14 stops of dynamic range in AVCHD
July 2, 2012
http://vimeo.com/42589604
Above: 240fps at 120mph by Bill Totolo shot on the FS700

Adam Wilt over at ProVideoCoalition has done the first really comprehensive look at the Sony FS700’s image quality with a lab test. So far we’ve had field reports but nothing that goes into depth about image quality. How does it perform?

Here’s the full review from Adam at ProVideoCoalition and here are my thoughts on it –

First let me say I am deeply impressed with how far my FS100 digs into the shadows despite having an AVCHD codec at the standard 24mbit. There’s no nasty macro blocking and noise in the lows and you can pull up plenty of dark tones if you need to, without wreaking the image. Given the right picture profile and armed with the knowledge that it is best to transcode AVCHD to ProRes with 5DToRGB (to avoid the Mac Quicktime AVCHD clipping bug) the FS100 can manage a very “film like” image.

Has the FS700 managed to improve on an already good thing?

Although the FS700 does not have S-LOG like the F3 (Sony LOG) it does feature new Cine Gamma picture profiles. Lacking S-LOG does not mean you can’t have a flat profile – you can still use custom LOG profiles like the FS100 such as G-Log by Frank Glencairn.

Dynamic range

Bluntly, the FS700 is off the chart for dynamic range. Adam Wilt first tested the camera with a 13.3 stop dynamic range chart but not a single stop clipped to black.

Step forward Art Adams and a 20 stop Xyla 21 chart. On this chart the FS700’s dynamic range measured 14 stops!

That is more than the forthcoming Blackmagic Cinema Camera in raw and very close to the Hollywood gold standard of 35mm film which is approximately 15 stops.

Although highlights blow more easily (and less gradually) than film which has a lot of latitude, you can feel comfortable under exposing on the FS700 to protect the highlights, safe in the knowledge you can dig 13-14 stops into the shadows and bring them up cleanly, without a load of compression and noise.

FS700 dynamic range test

Above: Art Adams FS700 dynamic range test chart in Cine 2 Gamma mode

Highlight handling

The bad news is that there’s still some false colour on the edges of sharply defined highlights according to Adam. In this respect it seems similar to the FS100 and it is a shame they have not fixed that because it is pretty much the only artefact left. That said, the Canon C300 also has a similar issue. I’ve seen it occur less regularly than in my FS100 footage but I have seen it around very bright highlights in under exposed footage. Specifically – a candle in a church and sun light glinting off the sea in a heavily underexposed shot. From Adam:

Sharp transitions between normal exposure and overexposure – edges of blown-out windows, sharply-defined specular highlights, and the like – show jagged, oversharpened edges and spurious chroma artifacts. I’m guessing that when a cluster of photosites is sampled and processed to generate an image pixel, having some but not all of the photosites in the cluster driven to their clipping values may be fooling the color-reconstruction algorithm used, just as channel-specific clipping in the highlights (on any camera) can cause a hue shift in the affected area.

Resolution

In terms of resolution the FS700 measures similarly to the FS100 despite having an oversampling 4K sensor. But this is not really a problem, since the FS100 ranks very highly when it comes to resolving a nice 1080p image with plenty of fine detail. From the review:

The FS700 is very close to the FS100 on the charts, capturing 800 TVl/ph horizontally and 1000+ lines vertically…There’s some slight horizontal luma aliasing, and muted vertical chroma aliasing. It’s clear that the camera’s internal demosaicing isn’t getting quite as much out of the 4K-ready sensor as theory says it should; it’s not bad, but it’s not as crisp and detailed as one might hope. In real-world shooting, though, the slight resolution shortfall isn’t an issue; FS700 pix look very rich and detailed.

Even so, if and when the 4K compressed raw output becomes available, it’ll be interesting to see what additional quality can be wrung out of this sensor.

AVCHD – an underrated codec

Clearly Sony have done a superb job on the latest implementation of AVCHD in the FS700.

To be honest if the FS700 can do 14 stops in AVCHD why do we need raw at all? Is raw overrated? Is it time to embrace sophisticated compression rather than seek out raw cameras like the Blackmagic Design Cinema Camera and Digital Bolex?

Head over to the ProVideoCoalition FS700 review and Art Adams FS700 dynamic range test for the complete info.

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