FS7: New Sony F7 XDCAM 4K Super 35mm Camcorder

Hard one to judge as for the FS7 piece Wingrove used Dog Schidt lenses which have and extreme low contrast look plus the colour grade on the FS7 footage is washed out on purpose with little colour. I don't believe that is a sensor thing as much as a creative choice. Is one of them pre-dawn and the other magic hour? The light is completely different which really effects the image.
 
RatLabProductions said:
Hard one to judge as for the FS7 piece Wingrove used Dog Schidt lenses which have and extreme low contrast look plus the colour grade on the FS7 footage is washed out on purpose with little colour. I don't believe that is a sensor thing as much as a creative choice. Is one of them pre-dawn and the other magic hour? The light is completely different which really effects the image.
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I know, so many variables that are different between those two. Hard to judge which one is "better", but still - I like the first piece more ;)
 
Viddovation said:
As for the idea that everything will move to large sensors and crop down when needed... why? If I want to buy a rubber mallet, there's no good reason for me to buy a claw hammer and then buy a "rubberizing adapter" to turn said claw hammer into a mallet. I can just buy a mallet in the first place. Horses for courses, and the right tool for the job. S35 isn't appropriate for everything.
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Nobody here thinks that everbody os moving to S35 without making any sense to them.

I just can't speak for me and some colleagues: For documentaries we always wanted cinematic images from a camera that is one-man operable
and lightweight to carry all day.
We used the ENG cameras, the small ones like SOny PD150, Pany DVX100, SOny EX-1/3 and so on. We basicly loved the EX-1/3 but hoped since to get something similar with a bigger sensor hence
better lowlight capabilities and better DR. We knew that the overall system must be bigger and some more tradeoffs will come in.
Yes, some took the F3 as the only available solution at a certain time. We loved the picture but missed many other things - the from factor was the worst for the most of us.
But we learned how post processing and picture profiles helped to get a more cinematic image.

When the "affordable" S35 era began some of us worked with the FS100/700, some went the Canon cinema EOS route alittle later. The lack of NDs have been a bad manour for Sony in the early S35 days.
I loved the EA-50 for the form factor, which suited me much more than the FS100/700 or Cinema EOS series, but it was just a DSLR photo sensor packed in a "handycam" package. The picture still didn't live
up to what we loved from the F3.

The F35 was just out of financial reach all the time and sort of bulky too.

The FS7 is some kind of a modern F3(F5) in a EA50 form factor. Small and lightweight, display where it belongs, XLR out of your way, 90-95% of the image capabilities can be done by recording in camera,
able to handhold, able to put on chest or shoulder...
At that price point, we can't just have a F35 with 4k and same build quality. The FS7 has the Sony 4k S35 standard sensor and is built to compete against C100/300.
But despite that, they packed some great ideas in the FS7. May it not be 100% perfect, but it's still worth investing for some of us.

After having used S35 cams for the last 3 years, I just can't go back. I still love the FS100 (which seems to be the worst S35 camera ever produced if I believe what people say today) and the image it can
produce. Yes, it has a lot of quirks, the image is far from cinematic if you have the F35 and alikes.
But it still gives me more "room" for crazy light situations if you operate with the right PP.
The FS7 will even give more "freedom" in operability for us verités!

still02.jpg

Situations like these have been an issue for a long decade. Yeah, the highlight roll-off isn't the smoothest either and the skintones are what they are.
But remember: 8bit AVCHD FS100 with "plastic" kitlens and quick grade only...
 
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Viddovation said:
If I want to buy a rubber mallet, there's no good reason for me to buy a claw hammer and then buy a "rubberizing adapter" to turn said claw hammer into a mallet. I can just buy a mallet in the first place. Horses for courses, and the right tool for the job. S35 isn't appropriate for everything.
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Yes but the strongest argument would be for the person who needed both tools. If the claw hammer was £20 and the rubber mallet £20 but you could instead buy a claw hammer and a "rubberizing adapter" together for £25 that would make a lot of sense - as long as it did both jobs sufficiently well. Whether the FS7 will do both jobs equally well really depends on the user and what work and how much they do in each field.

Steve
 
Erik Wittbusch said:
We used the ENG cameras, the small ones like SOny PD150, Pany DVX100, SOny EX-1/3 and so on. We basicly loved the EX-1/3 but hoped since to get something similar with a bigger sensor hence
better lowlight capabilities and better DR.
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That is the exact camera path I have taken in 'digital' documentary shooting. Maybe that is why the FS7 excites me. I've been waiting for it to come.


Also I read on facebook from someone who saw the FS7 presentation the other day were Den explained that the Sony launch video was essentially controlled by the Sony engineers and they kept asking for brighter exposure so no noise was present in Slog even though it would have been graded out. That explanation explains a lot of why the launch videos looked the way they did.
 
Osslund said:
It watched this lovely old video shot with the F3 by Jason Wingrove.


As it happens he used the same location when trying the FS7.


I guess the first one was pre Slog on the F3 hence the clipped yellow but they are very different in appearance.

Try running both at the same time and see which one catches your eye.
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That's a good call. Funnily enough, the FS7 piece doesn't look as noisy watching it again, maybe that's a Vimeo thing, maybe the file's been cleaned up, maybe my eyes aren't so tired. Anyway, faith restored:-)
 
Liam Hall said:
That's what I'm banking on... ...this is hard for me though, as it is I feel like I'm going over to the dark side buying a Sony, I just need a little more zing from the prototype shooters:-)
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Hi Liam,

I agree with you that some of the FS7 videos that were listed are pretty terrible. I’m not sure what the problem is, as I get great results from my FS700 + 7Q which should be very similar to the FS7. I don’t usually do crazy grades either, but I do have a very extensive post background, so maybe I just know when to hold back a bit more as many things are over graded.

I came from using Canon for a long time and I think Canon and Sony both has pluses and minus. If I want to pass something to a client quickly without much post, the out of the box Canon look is fantastic. However, if I want anything cinematic, I will take S-Log over Canon any day, but S-Log does require grading and can be noisy in the shadows and really punishing exposure errors. I might be in the minority on this, but I far and away prefer S-log skin tones as it looks much more neutral than Canon's stylized and saturated skin tones.

I do wish Sony would come out with a nice looking pre-grade LUT for the FS7 as I’m thinking of getting it. Maybe that's why some of the FS7 videos look so bad, is because they used a pre-set instead of S-Log? Just a guess, but yeah... the colors look awful and super video, aside from Jason Wingroves shots which I really liked.

Here’s some stuff I shot on the FS700 + 7Q S-Log that should be easy to replicate on the FS7 (At least I hope). Sorry theres quite a bit of slow motion. For paid work, I rarely get to do slow motion or stuff that’s quite as artistic, so when I shoot my own stuff I try to go super Artsy.

Just some portraits at the Comic Con, shot in 4K RAW @ 60fps and 2K RAW @ 240fps. I did stylize the grade a bit towards green a little bit.


https://vimeo.com/107709387


Less slow motion and lots of real time. A spot which isn’t out yet, so it’s password protected and please keep it on the hush-hush. I like this spot a lot as it really shows off how good S-Log and RAW can be.



https://vimeo.com/98811258


Password: keepwash


Here’s a quick doc. with lots of skin tones. Shot in 2K RAW @ 120 fps.



https://vimeo.com/85786185


Some stuff that really shows off the S-Log color capabilities, which many of the FS7 videos above can’t seem to bring out for some reason. It’s easy. This is the test that lead to the commercial spot above.



https://vimeo.com/90512101


Yeah, I’m not sure why there’s so many bad FS7 videos (Aside from Jason Wingroves) floating around at this moment. I would think that it would be at least a good looking as the 7Q S-Log 2 which is very easy to make nice looking. I often just do some basic levels, add some saturation and maybe a bit of individual color channel tweaks if needed. But yeah, S-Log is easy stuff to grade and make look good, but what I'm hoping is for a really good LUT for those quick jobs. Sony should just rip off Canon or the Alexa on one of their LUTs.
 
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I checked my kitted F3 and it ended up at 5638g. That's including 24-70 lens, camera body, ET armour, Optitek adapter, BPU60, 2x SxS cards, Sachtler plate, Samurai with one F770 battery, sun hood, magic arm and SSD disk.

Checking how much I'd "loose" weight wise with the FS7 I have these numbers so far but there are some missing so if you have it fill it in:

Canon 24-70 902g
FS7 body 1830g
Monitor/loupe/handle 772g (guessing by some info)
BP-U60 431g
Metabones Speedbooster 196g
XQD S-series 2x 64GB 16g

Total: 4147g (F3 5638g)

So I might loose 1491g in shooting mode.

Edit: By looking at slides from Sony I ended up at 4247g for the list above and a fully configured FS7. That is including the hand grip and arm so without these maybe even 500g lighter which is great!
 
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starcentral said:
@Osslund - Agree the F3/FS700/FS7/F5/F55 really more or less have the same look "out of the box" but its the magic in post that is going to make it flourish.

@Liam - I hear you. I just wrote on Sony forums why Canon has so much more going for it than Sony but of course no one there wants to hear it. The fact is the Sony cams are all around really great feature wise and possibly in other areas too and just need some TLC to bring it higher and to the next level.

Anyway, welcome to the dark side.
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@ Starcentral, what do you like about Canon? I'm curious. I do love Canon's out of the box look as it's quick and easy. But I love S-Log for cinematic purposes.
 
gene_can_sing said:
Hi Liam,

I agree with you that some of the FS7 videos that were listed are pretty terrible. I’m not sure what the problem is, as I get great results from my FS700 + 7Q which should be very similar to the FS7. I don’t usually do crazy grades either, but I do have a very extensive post background, so maybe I just know when to hold back a bit more as many things are over graded...

(EDIT)

...I came from using Canon for a long time and I think Canon and Sony both has pluses and minus. If I want to pass something to a client quickly without much post, the out of the box Canon look is fantastic. However, if I want anything cinematic, I will take S-Log over Canon any day, but S-Log does require grading and can be noisy in the shadows and really punishing exposure errors. I might be in the minority on this, but I far and away prefer S-log skin tones as it looks much more neutral than Canon's stylized and saturated skin tones.
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Nice work Gene. S-Log holds no fear for me, I've seen enough quality images from F55/5/700 to know that it scrubs up nicely. There's certainly some grading issues with those FS7 videos, I also think some of the shots have been captured with a 360 or 270 degree shutter which isn't helping.
 
C'mon guys.

Preproduction model, a few hours or less for preparing a totally unknown camera.
What do we know in what kind of issues those guys just fell.
Let's wait for the first 1.xx firmware models and some operators, that can spend more
time with the Fs7. Then we'll see better footage.
And don't forget: All of the footage is vimeo/youtube compressed stuff so not really
suited for critical observation of technical footage anyway...
 
Liam Hall said:
Nice work Gene. S-Log holds no fear for me, I've seen enough quality images from F55/5/700 to know that it scrubs up nicely. There's certainly some grading issues with those FS7 videos, I also think some of the shots have been captured with a 360 or 270 degree shutter which isn't helping.
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I agree with you. There's all sorts of weird stuff going on with some of those tests - colors, contrast, etc.. Lots of it just looks ugly as S#!T. Not a good way to inspire sales.

Sony really needs to take a page in advertising from other camera manufactures and put out good videos with top cinematographers, like this one from Panasonic.


Holy smokes the footage looks good and definitely makes me wish I had $50K to buy the thing. Seems like every time Sony releases a new, hyped camera they just give prototypes to any job-blow shooter and results are a very mixed bag of footage - some good, some truly terrible. Not good marketing.
 
Look - Presumably this camera looks like an F5. That means great video quality in HD, great in low light, 4K + slog 3 and the Slog3709 LUT for take home which very critical eyes love and compare to Alexa. Then you have image stabilization and better ergonomics for handheld work and XAVC for 4K files that don't take all day to download. Add a PL adapter , a speed booster, an 18-200 lens for when you have enough light and 180 fps and it sound like an all purpose can opener . No its not a 2/3 ENG cam and it doesn't have center scan, and the 28-135 wasn't an 18 - 105, but aside from that, what's not to like?

At $8K ????? Damn - it even uses my F3 batts. Stop complaining.

Hopefully it delivers on image quality , the EVF is acceptable, and that weird arm works well.
 
Mitch Gross said:
As beautiful and effective as it is, I would also point out that the Varicam reel cost a small fortune to produce.
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Well of course it did. It's important and worth spending money on. Quality control is an absolute must too with the release of a new camera. I find it extraordinary that bad footage is allowed to be posted to the net when they should be creating a buzz about the product. Red made the same mistake last year giving their new shiny Dragon to the wrong people. It's was an object lesson in how not to launch a camera.
 
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