Just got a new camera - Sony F35

Anymore I find I'm just using the F35 grain. If I do add a film scan grain it's typically only 30-50% strength in the comp.
Thanks for the added info.
 
Top work Barratt - I don't know whether it's just me but those stills all look really "scandanavian". They love wide, carefully composed shots with a slightly muted look. Really love the night ext.
 
Thanks James! Really appreciate the kind words. I do love the scandinavian 'look' as you mention, very cold, distant feeling. Was fun to be able to experiment with it as this short calls for that sort of mood. Something the Ikonoskop camera seems to be able to produce almost by default, one of the reasons it still holds a place in my heart :-)
 
NEEDED: I had a lens that was touching the three little ears on my PL mount. I removed them and the little black delrin stop, and placed them and the tiny screws into a zip lock back. Now it's MIA. Does anyone have a front plate and/or a PL mount that I can purchase? Thanks.
 
JMtheDP said:
How does the F35 hold up in a 4K world?

Depends who's asking.
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And I guess depends how much you care really. That is how much you care about your image or to use you camera to it's best.

I have been tempted to buy a F35 since I saw this thread. But I haven't yet have the guts to pull the trigger. :-(

Mainly because I know it would be hard to resell it if I don't like it and also for size, low light, old tech, hard to find parts and accessories, expensive service with some parts probably impossible to find, lack of a modern workflow with modern software and old tech limitations and all. But it can look great! It definitely has a mojo.

On the other hand it can look truly disgusting too.

I have been watching everything I can find which was shot on the F35. Hawaii 5.0 for example is one of the shows that looks great. I think second season they switched to Alexa though. I also quite like the cold and disat. look in Harry Brown.

But then you look at a movie such as SWAT:Firefight and you can barely believe it is the same camera. I mean, two indie feature films shot by members of DVXuser on the AF100 look way better than SWAT: Firefight. This movie is probably one of the crappiest F35 footage I ever seen. What scares you is that it wasn't really an indie film. Well, not in the sense of low, low budget. It had a $8million budget. That kind of gets you thinking. If a $8million production with a full crew can't get good looking footage out of the F35, how can we poor suckers? Do you have to have a very high budget to pull of a full feature with this camera? I know there are several short clips out there looking great. But short clips and tests are easy.

But then you think, it's 8 million for Christ's sake, how the heck can't they? I mean the movie had Robert Patrick in it. Not a big star, but I'm sure they had enough grip, lighting and I hope a decent crew and D.P.

Is the camera that hard to work with on a lower budget or they just didn't care? If the later it makes no sense because it's their own product. Every review mentions the crappy image. It was really bad. Very noisy night or internal shots, blown out skies and the F35 is supposedly good with highlights. Every shot looked different. Different noise, different color, different shaprness etc. Some wide shots looked very soft! I don't know what happened.

P.S. Nice we have a sub forum for the F35. About time!
 
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SJX said:
lack of a modern workflow with modern software and old tech limitations and all.
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I would say that's pretty unfair. We're not talking about Betamax, the camera produces 1080P HD standard files (to whatever format your recorder supports) and I would say is probably one of the easiest to deal with of all the large cinema cameras?

I mean, there are still a *lot* of people who have issues with RAW workflows and I encounter a lot of people who would have been better suited to buying an F3 or F35 or similar than, say, a Blackmagic Cinema Camera because of that reason alone.

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Regarding crappy images, it drives me absolutely NUTS when I see stuff in big films that I just don't understand. Like when they choose to shoot with the shutter off, during the daytime, for an exterior scene... why would you do that? There's just no need.

Any film shooting with the F35 should certainly have the budget for some lights. I haven't seen the film you mentioned, but with a budget of $8m you've got no excuse for it to look crappy.

One thing I would say about the F35 is that is is possible, if you REALLY, genuinely didn't know what you were doing (and you shouldn't be on an $8m movie if this is the case!) to have the F35 set up in factory default settings - ie. REC 709 gamma, no s-log, no decent processing, nothing.

I have seen the odd piece of work here and there by DoPs who produce beautiful work when shooting on film but often don't translate well to digital because I think they mis-understand some of the tech. Like not realising the picture on the monitor IS the picture you get. I personally can't understand this ever happening, but I know that it does.

I remember when I had my F900 I had to be very selective when people asked "what films have been shot on it" - because a lot of them looked really "video-y" and I knew the camera was capable of much more (Who liked the look of Miami Vice?)

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The important thing to remember - the camera IS capable of stunning pictures. Anyone who says they "can't work" with an F35 or can't make something good looking, isn't trying hard enough or isn't trying at all.
 
I'm shooting today with the following:

- two F35 cameras
- odyssey
- hyperdeck
- aja kipro quad

Very interesting and problematic discovery: my F35 footage looks so much better than the rental company camera. Somehow, mine is less noisy. Also, hypergammas produce very low resolution images. I've updated the rental camera to the latest firmware. This is something to worry about. Maybe not all cameras are the same? or maybe some settings that I'm not aware of are producing the terrible results. But this is something to be aware of!
 
Mac,

I guess the only way to be sure is to make sure both cameras are set to factory defaults if at all possible.

I wonder if you could black balance both (when they're warm) and after that take a screen grab from each camera with the lens cap on?

I can have a look at them both see if anything comes to mind.

In my experience the "noise reduction" option makes footage look a lot worse, but it is disabled in CINE and CINE-EI modes
 
I'm with JM: sounds like factory reset (which I'm sure you thought of). Curious as to how many hours the camera has on it, and where is places in the serial #'s.
Maybe we can start searching for a pattern in this.
 
Mac I think you are right about it being due to age. There is something very special about these CCD's, the organic nature of the image is from a chip that might age with time like old film stock. I bet if we could find a F35 that had been properly stored and never used once, it might produce the cleanest footage. Of course I have nothing to back this up and it's terrifying to think the grain will keep increasing with time until the camera is unusable. Might be a good reason for potential buyers to look for the newer silver PL ring versions, or always check the image on a large screen before purchase.

If F35's are different and some are noisier than others, I still love my camera and think it produces just the right amount of grain. Has anyone else noticed a honeycomb like pattern in F35 footage? Usually if you way under expose it. On my camera it is really subtle, but I see it in footage when I have the exposure way too low across the whole frame. I will try to find a photo.

Makes those 5 F35 blocks for sale on ebay very interesting. I wonder if they would let me go in and shoot charts with all 5 to look at the difference in grain. I will call them in the next few weeks and try.

Mac, does the ki pro quad recorder work with rental?
 
They have the same hours. I did actually test exactly that: lens cap on on cine ei and waveform momitor in the cinetal with split screen. They font produce the same black level.
Where is the factory reset? Just in yhe user profile? It didnt seem to do anything
Sent from iphone and half sleep
 
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****, I came today to the ser and the camera does not want to start. Red lights everywhere and the camera wont do anything except for weird stuff on the evf. I tried using diffenret power sources and no luck
 
I hope that's the rental you are talking about. I don't see why if it's a rental house they wouldn't give you another camera without too much fuss, they must realize also the cameras are very old. I wonder if there is some sort of "hard reset" switch hidden on the camera. Did you try the camera body with nothing else attached? I had a bad d-tap cable that was able to unpower my whole rig.

The bad image was related to the camera dying somehow? At least this lets us know that maybe the bad grain you saw was an indication of a major issue inside the camera.

Macgregor- always the first with the F35
 
tlst.jpg
Does any of this come up? Pg 126 of the F35 manual.
 

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If he can't see the EVF, I doubt he'll be able to get into the diagnostics menu.

One thing that has occurred to me reading that is that if the fan near the CCD was bust, that would explain the picture being very noisy - they get noisier as they got hotter.

As for the longevity of these things, I have never heard anything to suggest that CCDs diminish with age. I had an F900 that was close to ten years old and it was absolutely fine.

My F35's serial number is 10006 - I doubt anyone on here as one older than that! These things are built like tanks and should last a lot longer than the five or so years old they are.
 
hmm. To be honest it does sound suspiciously like a power issue.

I had a Sony camera long time ago that did something similar - seemed apocalyptically bad but it turned out to be a loose power connector internally.

Have you tried powering the camera both ways (ie. via the XLR input and the 8-pin lemo)? Otherwise sounds like it needs a techie to me
 
Bugger. Nothing I can think to recommend from here, other than the obvious get-it-to-a-techie-fast.

I am hopeful that it will turn out to be a relatively minor issue - something as simple as a battery with improper voltage can cause the problems you're having (although I know that won't be the cause for you, just an example)

Good luck mac - we're all behind you!
 
If you get it booted again, try resetting all of the user/gamma/LUT settings:

To reset the files and settings collectively
All files except the OHB file can be reset simultaneously.
Position the pointer to FILE PRESET (–OHB) on the
<FILE PRESET 2> page then push on the MENU SEL/
ENTER dial. The message “POWER OFF TO SET” will
be displayed. Set the POWER switch of the camera to OFF.
 
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