Is the Alexa better than the F35?

SJX,

You made some good points in this thread on technical merit. However, the way you're constructing your sentences is inflammatory, and only encourages readers to dismiss your comments as being those of a "fanboy". There's no need to "bark". If people don't appreciate the camera, they'll eventually tire of the commentary and return to a more relevant conversation.

For someone who shoots solely on RED or Alexa I doubt time spent in an F35 forum is highly productive or profitable.
 
Viddovation said:
Let's be clear on one thing - no matter how good you think the F35 is, there are a very limited number of them in existence. By some accounts, under 250 world wide. I expect that means that even if you include SRW9000-PL cameras the count would be well under 500 total. With numbers like these, and with very few if any F35 cameras still in the hands of large rental houses, you simply cannot expect to see them showing up on large productions going forward, nor can you expect that most DPs will shoot with the F35. It will be limited primarily to a small number of owner operators.

With this in mind, it's difficult for us to expect those who haven't shot the F35 to truly understand it's appeal, when the marketing for the newer cameras puts the paper specs of the F35 to shame.
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Viddo you always speak the truth. But long before I get hands on F35 to use it I knew of the good things about it. I was also skeptical before but did research and understood. So not sure this is real excuse for them. If somebody want to throw hard numbers check facts first.

Viddovation said:
And those who invest in a $40k+ Dragon or a $60k+ Alexa are bound to find reasons to validate the expense they put into their investment.
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Yes I think is more this!
 
Viddovation said:
SJX,

You made some good points in this thread on technical merit. However, the way you're constructing your sentences is inflammatory, and only encourages readers to dismiss your comments as being those of a "fanboy". There's no need to "bark". If people don't appreciate the camera, they'll eventually tire of the commentary and return to a more relevant conversation.

For someone who shoots solely on RED or Alexa I doubt time spent in an F35 forum is highly productive or profitable.
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Viddo I ignored his first post. I saw the bait. But then he says people need to be fan boy or afraid to move on to see F35 merit? I decided was too much and I decided to post on his level. He makes nonsense post and flames I give him a bit of his own poison back. I know not the best but is how I did. This is F35 forum. We are allowed to be fan boys here and talk as much of F35 as we want. We not going to red forum to bash red. If he wants to criticize ok but do with straight facts and without bait and flame. If he baits and flame I can throw it back at him.
 
SJX,

you continue to surprise me with your dedication to the F35, had you collected those quotes or did you spend all night looking them up? Have you purchased your own yet, I know you had rented a bum one.

Perhaps we need some great new 2013/14 F35 films to showcase our view of the camera. I always have found trying to explain the "look" of a camera in words to be a frustrating process. It is so very simple to show it.

The title of this thread is without any context and is an incomplete sentence. Better how? I think each and every one of us on either side of the fence on the usability of the F35 would agree camera specs don't dictate beautiful images- hard work, talent, experience, 10,000 hours, we can all agree on that. Better is defined by what category the competition is in. I grew up shooting movies on my shoulder and running around with the camera as fast as I can. I shot 16mm like a die hard up until 2011 when I got a GH2, I would run around with the GH2 and the footage would jitter, tear, roll and skew. Better for me is a camera that can act like 16mm when I want to move it, F35 is the only one that has done that. I am certain that my better is not the better of everyone else here. I have handheld footage from an Alexa, and it is very very excellent, but that image will also "break" before the F35 does when you start to move the camera.

So we can all agree, new cameras have surpassed the F35 technically in every category. The F35 probably isn't going to be making a lot of money for any of us.
 
I think if the title of the thread was "SRW-9000PL, worth upgrading to ALEXA for me?" - this debate probably wouldn't be here....

Sorry for this OP, we're usually very well behaved :)
 
OK, so Arri's Amiras can now get a sensor calibration and record to ProRes UHD in-camera. The upsample happens in camera, in real time.
I have heard that Viddovation is also working on a similar offering to the F35, using hacked-together hardware from various BlackMagic products. (Just kidding, but actually, why not? Heh).
Goes to show that the market isn't as "resolution" driven as one might think. A lot of people want "the look."
 
I detected some sarcasm there but just to avoid rumor, Viddo is not able to improve the image resolution of the F35 in any way. All he is working on is the interface to the recorder to get the F35 to "talk" properly. Things like rec button, in camera playback, ability to have LUT's enabled without burn-in. I'll let him speak on his own project but there is no way to upgrade the F35 past HD, it would take Sony's involement which will not happen, trust me we have already asked.
 
Honestly, I haven't done any serious testing regarding resolution. That said, done properly, the F35 should provide impressive results when upscaled to UHD.

If I were looking to uprez F35 footage to UHD for best results I would use RGB recording, and would then put the footage through a custom uprezzer that takes into consideration the RGB stripe sensor.

We all undersatand how to average numbers - you take two numbers, add them together, then divide them in half to get the intermediate value. This is one of the simplest ways to add "resolution". When you don't have hard edges the results may even look good. But edges are the problem - simply averaging on a sharp luma edge gives you a result that blurs the edge. So the trick would be the algoritm used for edge detection. While the F35 only provides 1080 vertical pixels of resolution, it actually gives use 5760 horizontal pixels of resolution, if we think in monochrome. It's not as good as having 5760 true RGB pixels, but it is a distinct improvement over 1920 horizontal pixels.

It's complex. I don't have any experience working with programming images or codecs or the like, so I haven't really done any serious investigation yet.

But there is some potential.
 
yachacha said:
I detected some sarcasm there but just to avoid rumor, Viddo is not able to improve the image resolution of the F35 in any way.
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Actually, my comment was more of irony. The Amira doesn't have a UHD sensor, with a 3.4K chip that has to be debayered. Arri admits openly that they are uprezzing the footage for UHD delivery.
Every camera operator using this setup will know they're not getting true 4k resolution, yet I doubt it'll stop anyone from buying into it. The Arri "look" has a huge following, and at the end of the day, the "look" is still more important than how "big" it is.
In my opinion, Arri is fighting marketing with marketing. "Look Mr and Ms Client! Arri now has a UHD camera!" :)



Viddovation said:
Honestly, I haven't done any serious testing regarding resolution. That said, done properly, the F35 should provide impressive results when upscaled to UHD.
If I were looking to uprez F35 footage to UHD for best results I would use RGB recording, and would then put the footage through a custom uprezzer that takes into consideration the RGB stripe sensor.
It's complex. I don't have any experience working with programming images or codecs or the like, so I haven't really done any serious investigation yet.
But there is some potential.
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I was joking about your involvement, although I have no doubt you could push this idea the farthest of anybody :). Would it be possible to grab the data right off the chip, even if it meant converting it in post?
Ultimately, however, it does need to be recorded as 4k in-camera. That way we can slap a "4K" on the side of the camera body :).
If anyone asks, just say you were inspired by Arri!
 
I can only imagine the groan from ARRI's engineers when their marketing department told them to introduce this.

For me, and I'm sure most people, recording "4K" out of that camera seems like a chronic waste of space. It delivers fantastic 2K, which the last time I checked was STILL the delivery format of choice for many high-end feature films, and the AMIRA is aimed at lower-end stuff.

Ludicrous.
 
I think its mainly targeted towards work for television where UHD will be mainly a gimmick for streaming compressed signals. The Amira seems to go for offering the easiest/fastest workflow for smaller productions and I imagine for TV its gonna be UHD in-camera.
 
Sandbox said:
I was joking about your involvement, although I have no doubt you could push this idea the farthest of anybody :). Would it be possible to grab the data right off the chip, even if it meant converting it in post?
Ultimately, however, it does need to be recorded as 4k in-camera. That way we can slap a "4K" on the side of the camera body :).
If anyone asks, just say you were inspired by Arri!
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Grabbing data straight from the image sensor is not something I have any inkling how to do. You would essentially need to program a DSP to catch all the incoming voltages and convert them to digital values and send the data to a recording medium. It would essentially be raw linear data from an RGB stripe sensor. It would have to bypass all the existing hardware, and it sounds pretty complicated to me. To the credit though, you'd actually double your vertical pixels though - 2160, which is a fairly convenient number.

A solution that doesn't require camera modification is to record in 10bit or 12bit RGB 444. A unique property of the RGB vertical stripe sensor is that we can intelligently map each Red, Green, or Blue value in the video signal back to a single physical location on the sensor. This mapping would allow for more accurate upresolution results.

*****
There is some grief in the marketplace about whether UHD is really 4k, and confusion over 4k acquisition and UHD delivery. It's all a bit silly. UHD makes sense because it's essentially 4x 1920x1080, which allows for fairly logical uprezzing of bluray content and so forth. Likewise, it makes the most sense to consider uprezzing the F35 to UHD because that's the ultimate delivery format anyway.
 
Honestly, I would not feel even a little bit guilty about selling up-scaled F35 files as "4K" to a production considering using the AMIRA. Especially as it is UHD rather than 4K, which would scale from 1080P very neatly.
 
JMtheDP said:
I think if the title of the thread was "SRW-9000PL, worth upgrading to ALEXA for me?" - this debate probably wouldn't be here....

Sorry for this OP, we're usually very well behaved :)
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That's ok, debate is good - as long as everyone is respectful. I did try to change the title immediately after posting to "different" rather than "better" as that's not really what I was meaning - I was just meaning can it compete in the same market - I saw and still see no reason why not.

And btw, in case it's of any relevance, I really like the Epic.

Steve
 
Is the SRW-9000 venerable? Not sure it got used on enough. The F900 was used on just about everything, but I only ever heard of one thing here using it.

I actually would have bought a 9000 over my F35 if I had the chance, but there were none for sale at a reasonable price at the time.
 
I thought the F35 had more pixels / greater resolution than the Alexa / Amira? Does that not mean that if the Amira can up=rez to 4k acceptably the F35 can too? What am I missing?
Steve
 
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