FS7: Is the FS7 as good as the F55? Why own the F55? Opinions...

Thanks guys -

regarding the comment about looks and higher pay, I asked for all possible reasons. I don't think the poster honestly believes equipment guarantees higher pay - but was trying to think of every possible difference to help answer my question.

I mistakingly thought the FS7 had both S-gamut and global shutter. Cion, Ursa both have global shutters. I am amazed the sony didn't include it.

It it would be nice if in light of the 6000 ursa's 4k global shutter prores etc that to keep f5/f55 owners happy they offered the prores upgrade for free. Maybe even throw in higher frame rates and a discount on accessories. But whatever. They're sony and know more than I do.

It sounds like this 8000 low cost f55 will cost 15k to bridge the gap - but even then no sgamut, global shutter, prores, But the FS7 is a good deal for many.

Thanks for for all your responses.

Now ow how the hell do I get rid of my noise on F55 - when exposed properly this shouldn't be happening. Right?
 
Ursa and Cion both have global shutters, but both are rated at just 400 ISO cameras I believe, and top out at about 12 stops of DR. Personally, I'll take broader dynamic range and greater sensitivity any day of the week.
 
brad smith said:
I don't think you'll be seeing anyone shooting eposidic or studio feartures on an FS7, but if you're shooting and cutting your own stuff the FS7 is a great camera. The F5/55 is a different camera for a different type of work.
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This! I think this say all. Max. FS7 could hope for is shooting episode of keeping up with the kardashians. Is different camera. Is cheap low budget camera. Sorry OP but asking if FS7 is as good as F55 sound like joke question. Better question is how close can FS7 come to F55. As good? Never.

For all talking about cion and ursa remember both use same sensor as blackmagic 4K. Barely iso 400, 10 stops dynamic range, black sun etc. They say 12 stops but sensor can only do 10 real stops. Rest is some trickery and when I use blackmagic 4k is clear F3 has more dynamic range. Last time I use blackmagic 4k it pissed me off so much. So no interest in cion or ursa as they are just overgrown blackmagic 4k. Not same league with F55 at all.
 
morgan_moore said:
One could spin the question?

Is a camera (the Fs7) that cant film a light show, a wedding with a photographer in attendance, a red carpet event with photographers in attendance, or even a helicopter taking off worth buying at all?

S
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This is very good point too.
 
Osslund said:
When I saw the current crop of high end video cameras like Epic, F55, C500, Amira, Varicam and FS7 next to each other I have to admit the FS7 looked like a toy camera.
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Funny I had same feeling. Is small right and feels like plastic. Good if you need light not good if you need durable.
 
jshbckr said:
FS7 doesn't do internal ProRes, can't output 4K through SDI, doesn't have a global shutter or a PL mount, doesn't have optical low pass filter for shooting cleaner 2K video, doesn't have the punch-in 2K video mode...

F55 also has timecode in/out (without a bulky add-on unit), it interfaces directly with the R5 RAW recorder (without a bulky add-on unit to enable RAW out), DC 12v in 4-pin XLR (without bulky add-on unit...). The F55 also has a much, much nicer info display on the side of the camera, which you don't have on the FS7. Personally, I like the side screen instead of overlays in the LCD screen.

The thing about nicer cameras is that you pretty much pay exponentially more money to get *slightly* more/better features. But the people who need/want these will pay for them. The people who see the FS7 as "an $8000 F55" are dismissing features that make the F55 what it is, just because they maybe don't use or care about those features.
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I think they dismiss because they can't afford and pretend they don't care. But if it was free everybody would be raving.
 
I can't say much about the CION, but I had a chance to look at the Ursa rigged up in person, and it's a totally different beast than the FS7. You really can't just look at the resolution and frame rate and call it the same. It's MASSIVE. Until you see on in person, you don't really get how gigantic this thing really is. It doesn't even have a place to plug in your batteries. You need to buy either a V-lock or AB plate to get it off AC power at all. The camera comes with rod mounts and VCT wedge, but doesn't seem to have a shoulder pad between the VCT wedge and pin grip in the back, so you're gonna need to stick a shoulder pad on the bottom of a VCT baseplate, which seems counterintuitive since VCT design sort of makes room for a shoulder pad in the first place. All this before we talk about dynamic range, sensitivity, codec and other such things.

Overall, when I looked at it, it still felt like a tech-toy by a post production pipeline supplier. It didn't feel like a camera meant for field work, but rather for highly controlled, studio settings. I'm not saying it doesn't have a place in the world, but it doesn't really share the same space as the FS7.
 
SJX said:
Max. FS7 could hope for is shooting episode of keeping up with the kardashians.
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That's absolutely not true - it's capable of shooting anything right up to million dollar Hollywood movies - it has the spec to do it and then some. Whether it will be used much or at all for that sort of high end work is another thing, but it can do it. It's the same as saying the Nikon D3200 can't shoot a National Geographic magazine spread - virtually none of the photographers use one but that's not because it can't do it.
One of the main reasons bigger budget shows and films use more expensive gear is because they can, and in terms of of the overall daily budget the cost of the camera itself becomes tiny and so no big deal to get a relatively expensive one. A set of Zeiss primes or an Optimo zoom costs way more than ANY of these cameras! An O'Connor 2575 and sticks costs as much as an F5! The camera body cost at this level is more or less irrelevant that's why the production doesn't use cheap ones - not because the cheaper camera can't do it.

Steve
 
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As someone who has used the f55 and the fs7 - the fs7 for a one day shoot, the f55 I have used on 4 different jobs - I will say this -
If you can't make something shot on the fs7 look 90% as good as the F55 - at least to cable tv or web, you are doing something wrong. So it's not financially worth it if you are in the market to buy the f55. Unless you are shooting a feature film that you plan to project DCP. Then I would of course recommend the f55. Of course I would recommend the Alexa over that because more people are familiar with the Alexa - colorists especially. And the Alexa now rents for lower than the f55, so why would a producer go with shooting on the f55 over the alexa? Because it has 4k? I trade nicer skin tones and color sensor and motion over 4k.

In one year, the fs7 will be the c300 camera of the rental world. And everyone and their mother will own one unless they already own a camera and then they will just stay with that camera and learn how to shoot better, light better, color better, and make that older camera work.

Case in point, I just shot 2 days on my old Sony F3s - and once I graded them now I know more about grading, damn I am more impressed with this footage that what I got with the fs7 footage. And you can buy a Sony F3 for around 4k on ebay.

sure you can justify why the f55 is better - but for all intensive purposes. The FS7 does slog3 and s gamut.cine and has probably slightly lower perceived resolution and similar highlight roll off and dynamic range as the f55. No colorist craves s.gamut over s.gamut.cine.

get mad, it's okay. No one saw the fs7 coming.

The real answer is this - this is no longer the time to buy gear to try to make a profit off of it. buy what you need, buy what you can afford. And instead of wasting time pixel peeping specs, learn how to make what you own already better. Learn how to light better. How to get better compositions. Learn how to color better or communicate better what you want.

That's the easist way to improve your footage without spending a lot of money.

Now that every camera can shoot log or raw - the difference between each camera is getting more and more minor. Sure some have different dynamic range and weight and battery consumption and how they handle color, but in the end, it's getting hard and harder to tell what a camera was shot on.

Case in point - the GO PRO 4 drone shots in the piece look better than the FS700 + O7Q shots. It's all about the grading.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnZ8_Jj8b0k&feature=youtu.be
 
steve phillipps said:
That's absolutely not true - it's capable of shooting anything right up to million dollar Hollywood movies - it has the spec to do it and then some. Whether it will be used much or at all for that sort of high end work is another thing, but it can do it. It's the same as saying the Nikon D3200 can't shoot a National Geographic magazine spread - virtually none of the photographers use one but that's not because it can't do it.
One of the main reasons bigger budget shows and films use more expensive gear is because they can, and in terms of of the overall daily budget the cost of the camera itself becomes tiny and so no big deal to get a relatively expensive one. A set of Zeiss primes or an Optimo zoom costs way more than ANY of these cameras! An O'Connor 2575 and sticks costs as much as an F5! The camera body cost at this level is more or less irrelevant that's why the production doesn't use cheap ones - not because the cheaper camera can't do it.

Steve
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Well, Need for Speed was a Hollywood movie and it was shot primarily on the C500, along with the 1DC,Go Pro Hero 3, and Alexa. You'll see the FS7 used in Tinseltown when it is the proper tool for the job.
 
It's way smarter to own a FS7 than a F55 if you expect to return the investment. It's a simple as that. If you are the kind of shooter that owns your camera equipment chances are you do reduced prices compared to a rental house and you probably aren't working with the high budget stuff.

Today I think you can make great looking video with so many cameras including the FS7. Once you reach 4k with a good LOG gamma and high fps the technology is on such a high level that it comes down to other stuff and what you prefer to use.
 
Whether George Lucas decides to use the FS7 on his next project, or the overpriced F55, I'm just glad Sony is in the game. :cool:
 
Just a point of view some will either agree or disagree with which is fine. This is my honest thought, which is that if you can afford the F5 (and there are lots of kit deals for them) I would try to get that over the FS7. But if on a budget and you are ok with a few compromises then YES of course the FS7 can give you over 90% (or more) the look of the F5 and possibly even the F55 depending what you shoot - but there are other points aside from that.

You won't get things like PL mount support, better exposure monitoring and/or LUT combination., 16mm crop mode support, 2K swappable OLPF, etc.. a lot has already been listed in this thread so I don't want to repeat them too much.

Through private messages or off the DVXuser website I get asked for a lot of advice or opinions on the FS7 camera and which camera to get, etc.. It's always a very difficult question to answer. I can only say that really each situation and everyone's position is different both project-wise as well as financially. When I got the F55 camera I knew 100% that the ROI wasn't completely in tact. But I knew that going in so for me it was ok to "lose" the extra $10k since at least I was getting GS, CFA, and 4K XAVC. (I actually don't look at it as "losing" because now I have these features). For myself I just wanted the best Sony camera that could shoot RAW, aside from the F65, because after using the F3 for a few years I had made the decision to jump ship and get a RED camera. Then the New F's were announced so I swam back to Sony.

In the end these cameras are all going to be neck and neck in terms of image quality. After grading that FS7 footage in the other thread I think that proves it, and that wasn't even RAW. So where or how you decide to spend your money really boils down to what you think is the right decision and choice to make. It's a huge spread between the three prices but it can be worth it simply because of how you plan to work with each camera or what your type of work entails.

Good luck with whatever you decide and share your decision or rationale here on the forums, it might help someone else with their decision after all.

cheers,
 
2 things you won't get with F5/F55 - Image stabilization and speed booster. Bothy fairly significant to me.
Pluses and Minuses both ways.
 
2 things you won't get with F5/F55 - Image stabilization and speed booster. Bothy fairly significant to me.
Pluses and Minuses both ways.

What is the "better exposure monitoring and/or LUT combination" on the F5/55?
 
There's still one point bringing the F5/55 to the top.
It has the the more powerful processor and therefore
will always have more or better working feature than
my FS7.
I met one of the Sony guys from the development team of their
cinematography division. He told me that the F5 and the FS7
share the same sensor and the XAVC codec - but that's it pretty much.
Differently build, different processing, geared towards different user
groups. The Sony developers will always work on the F5/55 features and
firmware first and then maybe look for the FS7.

The FS7 is still not a 100% work horse. Still to many issues - and I name
important issues like the iris dial or the waveform during LUTs on the
outputs.
I like the FS7 and I'm happy that I can afford such a capable camera.
But in the same moment I know it's not going to be an F5 or F55 type
of camera in the ned of the day.
I'll use it, where I used my FS100 or 2/3" ENG cameras before, so people
won't complain. But it's a one-man-band type camera. It's just not suited
for teamwork.

Yes, you can shoot feature movie with a Canon 5D type camera but it's not
really the best thing you can do if enough money is there.

Horses for courses.
 
Lenilenapi said:
2 things you won't get with F5/F55 - Image stabilization and speed booster. Bothy fairly significant to me.
Pluses and Minuses both ways.
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Doesn't the Optitek adapter the F's offer IS?

i do have to say, Speed Booster is a major benefit for run-and-gun type stuff which the FS7 is designed for. If I were to rent an F55, it would be for more set / scripted work and for that I would rather work in a Super 35mm format that everyone understands more.
 
Yes the processing power of the F5/F55 can not be denied. It's possible ever after the next V5 firmware update planned for December, that more firmware releases come out throughout 2015 and add something new, or even just make existing features better.

One thing I REALLY wish was added to F5/F55 was some type of HDR function - do you guys remember either the FS100 or FS700 had this (had a funny feature name) but the frame rate mode or resolution to use it was not 24p... anyway my point is something like HDR would really crank out superior images I feel.

Hey a guy can dream. :cool:
 
To me there's no question the F55 and F5 are better cameras but the FS7 might be good enough for most single operators. I wouldn't want to own a F5 or F55 due to the use of larger batteries mostly and the fact you have to add stuff for these to do what the FS7 can do.

I expect the FS7 to stay two years in my hands before I purchase something new and move on.
 
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