Goodbye everybody, I've got to go (F65)

I personally wouldn't call the F65 a "global shutter" camera, although Sony do. It is no more a "Global Shutter" than a D-21, ARRIFLEX Studio or a Dalsa Origin (for you history buffs).

However, as the thing we all strive for is a "film look", a mechanical rotating shutter does go a long way to achieving it.

I tried out an F65 and F55 the other day, motion skew is basically nil on both with their respective shutters on.

The F65 will exhibit a rolling shutter pattern when you try hard with the mechanical shutter off, but no more so than an ALEXA or EPIC.

I might actually use the electronic shutter a fair bit - for example, doing an intimate dialogue scene with little movement will be helped by reducing the noise the camera makes. The shutter does make noise.
 
James what would you say was your major deciding factor in the F65 over F55?

By the way the F65 apparently supports live streaming and clip playback to ipad... that sounds pretty cool.
 
JMtheDP said:
I personally wouldn't call the F65 a "global shutter" camera, although Sony do. It is no more a "Global Shutter" than a D-21, ARRIFLEX Studio or a Dalsa Origin (for you history buffs).

However, as the thing we all strive for is a "film look", a mechanical rotating shutter does go a long way to achieving it.

I tried out an F65 and F55 the other day, motion skew is basically nil on both with their respective shutters on.

The F65 will exhibit a rolling shutter pattern when you try hard with the mechanical shutter off, but no more so than an ALEXA or EPIC.

I might actually use the electronic shutter a fair bit - for example, doing an intimate dialogue scene with little movement will be helped by reducing the noise the camera makes. The shutter does make noise.
Click to expand...

To be clear, I wasn't inferring anything negative about the F65 shutter in my prior post, merely responding to the suggestion that it was a more "true" global shutter than the F35's CCD. That said, I will certainly concede that a mechanical rotating shutter should provide a better imitation of the look we expect from actual film. Although, the noise you allude does seem a small point where the F35 might have an edge.

The F55 ought to have a true global shutter implemented electronically - something the F5 and F65 lack. To my understanding, implementing this means extra circuitry next to each photosite to hold the value after the shutter close pulse is sent, until the DSP circuitry requests the value (at which point it's purged). This costs sensor space, and accounts for the reduced light sensitivity of the F55 compared to the F5. To my understanding, the F55 should be a global read no matter what shutter angle it's used at, even 360.
 
Oh dear. Chaps, the f65 could be the cleanest/noiseless image known to man. I say this because the brief while I had a f65 in my possession I shot only with the mechanical shutter, and shot some scenes with only practicals and a soft fill. The images were the cleanest I've ever seen off a camera. Furthermore I under exposed on purpose to retain marginal detail in the practicals.
To say that use of the electronic shutter would be appropriate for even cleaner images sounds overkill IMHO.
Really, one of the appeals of the F35 is it's fine grain that's very film like, and to have no grain makes for plastic images.

In the same vain, but on an F5 (but should apply to any cinealta raw camera), I don't know if anyone has tried this but, if you de-noise 4k raw in resolve with something like "neat denoise" on the first node (working in a 1080p project), literall magic happens. The noise disappears completely, without any loss in detail at all. It's quite remarkable. Then grade/Luts etc, then overlay a good 4k film grain (impulz has a fantastic one) and it's gorgeous my friends.
o can say that I have denoised various footy for over half a decade now, and never seen such a solid result as denoising 4k raw and garnishing with film grain. Also surprised to see that even terribly under exposed black of night turning into silky clean blacks that do not even "crawl" as normally does with blocky underexposed then denoised footy. Really has to be seen to be believed.
 
Justin

I think you've got your wires crossed. When I talk about the "noise" of the F65's shutter, I mean the actual sound it makes.

Also, judging by my testing the other day, yes the F55 has a proper global shutter as we would expect in a CCD camera. I was told that this, along with the colour filter array from the F65, was responsible for the 2/3rds stop loss from the F5.

Star, my reasoning for getting an F65 over an F55? It is better, and it is cheaper.

James
 
Oops! the actual sound of the shutter! my bad. Humble apologies James.
I didn't mean to come across in a harsh manner at all, it was light hearted, I assure you.

Im very jealous actually.

Good show old chap.
 
Also, as it is of interest, the process you are describing which includes de-noising, then adding grain, was I believe used on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
 
will probably be picking up an F65 in jan of 2015 , still enjoying the FS7Q and would love to add the F65. The only thing i dont like is that probably will have to invest in new media unless the 7Q will capture raw from the camera. THAT WOULD BE AWSOME!!! And my current glass is EF. Will an EF adapter work on the F65? i have 2 CP lenses that can be converted to pl but that looks like it takes too much time to do on location.
 
Baddgsx

No EF lens can be converted to PL unless it was designed to do it - it is a matter of physics, sadly.

It is also extremely unlikely you will be able to record RAW from the F65 with an external recorder - the data rate involved is enormous and Sony use a fibre optic connection to the SR-R4 to keep up.

JM
 
JMtheDP said:
It is also extremely unlikely you will be able to record RAW from the F65 with an external recorder - the data rate involved is enormous and Sony use a fibre optic connection to the SR-R4 to keep up.
Click to expand...

I'm inclined to agree with this statement, although, I think this might not be the case in a few short years. With the way tech is bounding forward, it may be that in five years there could be affordable off the shelf hardware that could be programmed to such a purpose and have the bandwidth to handle it.

I realize that isn't much consolation at the moment. But this is what I'm finding with the F35 right now - when manufactured high bandwidth 1080p recording took briefcase size "portable" recorders on the small side of things, and for the Viper and F23 and such I beleive there were digital recorders that arrived to set in man sized rackmount cases with 100k+ price tags. Today, much of those capabilities can be sent to something the size of a smartphone.

The work I've been doing on the F35 the past few weeks has made me realize that so many things would be possible with the F35 if only the time was put in. Anything from an iPad app to bluetooth control or more, could very likely be engineered to tap into the existing system. It's mostly a matter of time and effort, that's likely not to occur due to the small market.
 
Baddgsx said:
will probably be picking up an F65 in jan of 2015 , still enjoying the FS7Q and would love to add the F65. The only thing i dont like is that probably will have to invest in new media unless the 7Q will capture raw from the camera. THAT WOULD BE AWSOME!!! And my current glass is EF. Will an EF adapter work on the F65? i have 2 CP lenses that can be converted to pl but that looks like it takes too much time to do on location.
Click to expand...

If you have CP.2 glass, then yes, those lenses are designed with both PL and EF in mind, and can be adapted back and forth. However, you should understand that while Zeiss offers the ability to switch mounts on the CP.2 series as a feature, it's not intended to be a "quick switch" nor were the lenses designed with frequent switches in mind. Ideally, after every switch the lenses should be recalibrated and shimmed if necessary. It's intended more as a way to safeguard your investment as you move through different camera systems, or for rental houses to adapt to market forces like the influx of DSLRs. Doing field switches could result in dirtier lenses, lost screws, and without calibration your spacing for infinity focus might be off. This isn't to say it couldn't go well, but these would be the potential drawbacks.

That said, I can't fathom why you would need to do field switches on your CP.2 lenses unless you were trying to use both a PL camera and an EF camera on the same set with the same glass.

As for adapting the F65 to EF... well, certainly some people have had success doing that with the F35. However, unless I'm mistaken, the mechanical rotary shutter on the F65 adds an extra wrinkle, as I'm not sure how deep it sits in the flange, or whether it complicates the manner in which the PL mount itself is constructed.
 
Viddo

I think with the F35 recording externally is much easier because Sony gave us a way to do it from day one - the interface box. With the F65, you can't actually even get a 4:4:4 1080P signal out of it - only 4:2:2 for monitoring.

Also, the rotary shutter sits behind the cover glass, which is in the same place as the F35's - I can't remember if the cover glass got removed on other people's mods? If it stayed there, you should be fine.
 
JMtheDP said:
Viddo

I think with the F35 recording externally is much easier because Sony gave us a way to do it from day one - the interface box. With the F65, you can't actually even get a 4:4:4 1080P signal out of it - only 4:2:2 for monitoring.

Also, the rotary shutter sits behind the cover glass, which is in the same place as the F35's - I can't remember if the cover glass got removed on other people's mods? If it stayed there, you should be fine.
Click to expand...

but... why would you want to record externally with the F65?
 
JMtheDP said:
Viddo

I think with the F35 recording externally is much easier because Sony gave us a way to do it from day one - the interface box. With the F65, you can't actually even get a 4:4:4 1080P signal out of it - only 4:2:2 for monitoring.
Click to expand...

I was merely reminding everyone that technology will march on and what is difficult and unmanagebly expensive about these cameras today may be far more feasible in the future. The speed of embedded microprocessers, micro controllers and digital signal processers continues to increase while their cost relative to performance continues to decrease. Like wise, the read/write speeds of storage media continues to increase while relative costs decrease. At some point in the future, the hardware required to reliably capture F65 data will be fairly cheap. Of course, that doesn't mean there will necessarily be enough of a market to warrant building such a thing. I'm just saying that certain things become more feasible with time.

As for interface boxes and such - Sony did make that part easier for the F35, but you also lose much of the VTR control that way, unfortunately.
 
macgregor said:
but... why would you want to record externally with the F65?
Click to expand...

Mostly I'd say this - F65 media is expensive. There's no practical way to get around that right now, but in a few years there might be cheap conventional media that could be used, if only there were a recorder to interface with the camera and accept the third party media.
 
But on a single 1TB sony drive you can record a lot of hours on 1080p lite, correct? And that codec is actually better than prores, so why the need to bother with external recorders?
 
Technically, the SR-R4 IS an external recorder, and Sony already acknowledge it is limiting the potential of the camera. The recorder is why the camera will only do 60fps+ at 4K resolution.

Sony may themselves upgrade it in future, along with a higher speed memory card.
 
starcentral said:
James I don't recall, but did you end up getting an SR-R4 as well then or plan to record signal otherwise?

cheers,
Click to expand...

I think at the moment the SR-R4 is the *only* recorder for the F65, unless you want to record off the 1080p 422 monitor out port, whch seems pointless... might as well keep the F35 at that point.
 
The deal is not yet finalised, just sorting out logistical issues.

You will all know if and when it does appear, though.

And yes, the SR-R4 is the only way to record the full signal. Or anything better than 1080P 4:2:2
 
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