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

Erik Wittbusch said:
I doesn't make any sense to discuss "cinematic image" as we currently do.
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I think a good colorist can me iPhone video looks good, that does,'t meant the camera is good, I think a good cinematic camera give you cinematic footage without a lot of work. I think the Panasonic GH series offer this with out a doubt, you can find tons of examples on vimeo some beautiful films had use this Panasonic cameras...


for me is really hard to find lot of good examples shoots with the FS100-FS7000 and even F55 which I personally think is a great camera. As I said before I had own all these camera and never found the footage cinematic So What makes you think the FS7 would be any different?


to my Eyes raw footage direct from some cameras looks a lot more cinematic than other, whatever other people look at is a different history. I think GH cameras are very cinematic
 
Which type of cinematic image are you referring to?

The Wizard of Oz?
Blade Runner?
Breakfast at Tiffany's?
28 Days Later?

None of these look alike, so there does come a point that discussions such as these are more amusing than productive. Certainly a device such as a iPhone is simply not suited for large productions, for many reasons that have nothing to do with the Mp4 it can output. The GH4 does indeed produce a nice image. So does the Canon C100. And I've seen great things done with Sony cameras. That doesn't mean they are all equally suited for the same task; nor does it mean none of them are suited for any given task.
 
I still maintain that Panasonic and Canon "bake in" a look that is perceived as more cinematic so that out of the box footage is more impressive, and have been very successful at it. Doesn't mean that a competent colorist can't take Sony footage and make it look identical in minutes.
 
In all fairness. I found many GH4 videos that looked great and it will always be fewer great F5/F55 videos due to the vastly lower number of these cameras in user hands compared to the GH4.

I like what Filippo Chiesa shoots with any camera. This is a very good sample of him using the F5:


What he shoots usually looks very good and it's not the camera, it's him, he's the star. He's the one who make things look beautiful.

Each to his own and we have to respect that what a certain camera brings to any shooter can either be a good tool or a bad tool. It takes time for even a painter to find the right brush and they don't have to cope with the large number of technical innovations brought to us every season.

It's far easier to make something beautiful with a 5D than it is with a S-log shooting camera but in the end the S-log camera can go beyond what a 5D (or GH4) can do if you know how to take full advantage of it.
 
With the latest Sonys you can still choose to record for example S-Gamut3.cine/S-Log3 and
use a LUT like the LC-709 Type A MLUT for monitoring or you can still bake it in, if there's
no money/time to grade in PP.
With the most Sonys, it's still up to you, how the footage will look.
You can do a lot of things wrong here, but you can still dial in your "own look", if you are
capable of doing it.

I won't discuss this again in this thread, but that's exactly the way I (!) like it.
I don't want a camera specific look most of the time, but my own if it's possible.
Here'S my reason for the Sonys.

FYI: I did never think of buying one of the GH or Canon EOS cameras. It's very popular
because the look is popular (esp. the Canons), but it's not my look.
 
There are so many variables from in-camera settings to lenses used and location/costume/production considerations that this indescribable 'perception of cinematic' thing that nobody can nail down really isn't something I'd worry about too much when selecting a camera. If I work on something - whether it be a promo or a feature or a documentary, I'll invest as much time and effort in the post production as the production and so deliberately want to shoot with my post workflow in mind.

I had this for ages when I first bought a Red - people on forums saying over and over how they weren't cinematic or were incapable of giving nice skin tones - all despite the many many great looking films shot on them that have had theatrical releases. I just find the idea of people saying a brand of camera is inherently 'un-cinematic' to be absurd.

Osslund, that's a lovely video you posted but you're right - it's not the camera that made that clip great. It's the filmmaker.
 
Please excuse my rant :
This is so…. old... back in the day I remember it was Kodak vs Fuji - Kodak was so artificial and Fuji so warm - though we look back a hell of a lot of films shot on Kodak today and no one is complaining. I'll bet before that it was Technicolor - talk about over the top. Then it was Sony vs Ikegami and no question Iky had better colorimetry but they dropped the ball and then Pansonic got their engineers. So then it was Panny vs Sony, and again no doubt Panny had and probably still does have nicer color. We all preferred shooting on Panasonic cameras. then Panny dropped the ball with large sensors. So some people like Canon better, everybody loves Alexa… blah blah blah.

Truth is as the cameras have gotten better they re all much much closer and you can make beautiful pictures with anything.
I saw a show recently, that the director jumped up and down was so great because he shot it on an Alexa - but he never paid for a decent colorist - it sucked. After a certain point Its what you do with it not the vehicle. All my super critical Alexa loving friends have told me Slog3 on an F5 finally cuts the mustard and looks damn near an Alexa. For $8K that's good enough for me. Frankly if Panasonic made this camera I'd probably jump on it - but they don't.

If you guys are that critical, I'll bet the monitors you're looking at are a lot more decisive than your camera. Are you monitoring with a Flanders or a Panasonic or a TV Logic ? Maybe the problem is you have a Marshall or a Small HD. Watching on a computer monitor ? - oh my god ! And its from compressed footage on Vimeo? - Yikes! It better not be a laptop like mine. I hope you've spent as much on your monitor as I'm gonna spending on this camera .
Lenny
 
I have a couple of technical questions that i hope can be cleared up.

First re CODECS-
Am I correct in gathering that the preferred codec on this camera (or an F5/55) will be the XAVC Intra - for both HD and 4K?

When would you use XAVC-L (did i get that right?) - just when you need longer record times? How much loss will there be and where would you notice it?

What about MPEG-2 for HD? Is that similar to or the same as XDCAM - seems to be 422 8 bit if I'm correct. Would that again be a question of when you might want a smaller file size only? Presumably that should look pretty good for 709 as that's already better than an F3 internally and perhaps similar to a C300 spec wise.

Re: Recording baked-in LUT's as opposed to Hypergammas or pure 709 gammas for take home color:
. Any thoughts about the difference between 709 800% and 709 Type A?

I'm assuming one advantage to the traditional gammas though is you have access to the color adjustments that are shut off in CINE EI.

Thanks

Lenny
 
Lenilenapi said:
Please excuse my rant :..........Then it was Sony vs Ikegami and no question Iky had better colorimetry but they dropped the ball and then Pansonic got their engineers. So then it was Panny vs Sony, and again no doubt Panny had and probably still does have nicer color. We all preferred shooting on Panasonic cameras.
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Agree with everything you say, but there's more.

Go back 15-20 years and there really were differences in fundamental "look" between the early Panasonic/Sony HD cameras. Not just colour matrixing (and some people preferred the Sony "look" if they were doing more "reality" type television) but such fundamental things as Panasonic were typically 720p, Sony were 1080i. No right or wrong - horses for courses.

Move on and switchable formats tended to become the norm, and the range of "tweakability" in even relatively less expensive cameras meant talk of intrinsic manufacturer "look" made less and less sense. Switch your Panasonic camera to 1080i, change the default settings to give such as (especially) more detail correction and lo and behold - it got the "Sony look". And vice versa. "Look" became far more "default line up" - far less anything hardware intrinsic.

Move on again, to such as s-logs and (especially) RAW and it's become even less hardware dependent. Now, any concept of "look" is mostly down to what the grader does with the footage from the camera. Liam makes the point very well when he said "The BBC shoot Doctors and Casualty on Alexa. Neither look cinematic - they're not meant to." Very true - yet the Alexa can - and does - look very "cinematic" indeed on other productions. Nowadays it's far more down to how the footage is handled, much less the hardware. And as Lenny says - this discussion is now so…. old...

One further thing is that RAW and s-log is what really makes the difference in being able to decide the look in post production. In which case cameras like the GH4 become far more they are what they are - much less able to be changed later. If anyone does think a GH4 image looks more "cinematic" than an F55, then well, I can only assume it's because that's the way the director/grader of the F55 footage decided that's the way they wanted it.
 
Lenilenapi said:
I have a couple of technical questions that i hope can be cleared up.

First re CODECS-
Am I correct in gathering that the preferred codec on this camera (or an F5/55) will be the XAVC Intra - for both HD and 4K?

When would you use XAVC-L (did i get that right?) - just when you need longer record times? How much loss will there be and where would you notice it?
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You get what you pay for. Yes, Intra frame is probably going to be most satisfactory - but is also certain to mean higher data rates and bigger file sizes. Which translates into more storage, higher performance memory etc.

Dependent on bitrate, XAVC-L has the potential to give equivalent quality at lower bitrates/smaller file sizes - but may be more difficult to handle in editing, may require a transcode to Intra for that, but may be better as the acquisition format.

One very important fact is that with Intra frame, the file size/bitrate will scale with framerate, and I believe for 4k XAVC it's 240 Mbs for 24fps, but 600 Mbs for 60fps. That doesn't happen with long-GOP, whose bitrate won't change much with framerate. Reason is that the I frames are kept the same time interval apart (say 1/2 second) and the bulk of the bits go to making up the I frames. You'll still have 2 a second whether it's 24 or 60 fps.

Put simply, the higher the framerate, the more efficient a long-GOP system will become. So it may not be seen as a worthwhile saving at 24fps - but would be at 60fps.
What about MPEG-2 for HD? Is that similar to or the same as XDCAM - seems to be 422 8 bit if I'm correct. Would that again be a question of when you might want a smaller file size only? Presumably that should look pretty good for 709 as that's already better than an F3 internally and perhaps similar to a C300 spec wise.
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Yes to all of that, it's XDCAM422, so effectively same as a C300. I'd say a big reason to use it would be to fit in with a clients workflow? XDCAM422 is extensively used in broadcast TV, and a broadcaster may ask you to shoot in such for compatibility. May not be as good as some other formats for such as post grading, but a lot of quick turn round production doesn't have much time for that anyway.
 
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Lenilenapi said:
I have a couple of technical questions that i hope can be cleared up.

First re CODECS-
Am I correct in gathering that the preferred codec on this camera (or an F5/55) will be the XAVC Intra - for both HD and 4K?

When would you use XAVC-L (did i get that right?) - just when you need longer record times? How much loss will there be and where would you notice it?

What about MPEG-2 for HD? Is that similar to or the same as XDCAM - seems to be 422 8 bit if I'm correct. Would that again be a question of when you might want a smaller file size only? Presumably that should look pretty good for 709 as that's already better than an F3 internally and perhaps similar to a C300 spec wise.

Re: Recording baked-in LUT's as opposed to Hypergammas or pure 709 gammas for take home color:
. Any thoughts about the difference between 709 800% and 709 Type A?

I'm assuming one advantage to the traditional gammas though is you have access to the color adjustments that are shut off in CINE EI.

Thanks

Lenny
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I don't know about "preferred" but the highest quality codec the camera offers is XAVC-I. It is 10-bit 4:2:2

You might consider XAVC-L to minimize the amount of data. At UHD resolutions, it is 8-bit 4:2:0. At HD resolutions, it can record 10 bit 4:2:2. It is a space saver.

MPEG2 codecs are there I would suspect for existing workflows where MPEG2 XML's are already in place. Read here-- competition with C300.

The Rec 709A LUT seems more visually pleasing than 709 800% but I suspect one would need to experiment with the specific shooting scenario and/or look.


Ned
 
Thanks a lot guys. Very informative. I can see how all of those codec could be useful. The XAVC -L might especially be valuable for high speed where the the shot will tended to have fewer changes per frame anyway. Size of files and especially download speed are far more important on the set and a big deal in 4K so XAVC -L can really be a big advantage.
Are there any downsides if the image has lots of movement throughout the frame?

I'm still in FCP 7 so I have no idea what editors want these days. Is XAVC used as an editing codec or will they be transcoding to ProRes anyway. In that case XAVC-L would be fine I presume.

Is the MPEG-2 actually XDCAM or just similar?
 
XAVC is an editing codec. If you are in FCP 7 you would use Sony Catalyst to transcode to ProRes since FCP 7 won't read XAVC. MPEG2 is the codec of XDCAM. In the case of the FS7, it is MXF wrapped as opposed to .mov. That would mean in FCP 7 you would need a plug-in which would read MXF's.

Ned
 
It is an H.264 codec which edits natively just fine in PremierePro. As far as Avid goes, Avid always works best when ultimately transcoding to DNxHD. FCP X will handle XAVC files but again, X works best when transcoding to ProRes. So I guess you could say that it is an it isn't an editing codec. You can bring it into your NLE and then chose the optimal path for editing once in your NLE of choice.
 
wgtwo said:
XAVC is H264 - pretty sure that means it's not an editing codec!
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Why not? It's intraframe and high bitrate, why wouldn't you edit with it? The main reason most people would not consider most instances of H.264 to be not editing friendly is because the best known uses of it are GOP and require a fair amount of CPU, especially to decode single frames that are between keyframes. However, XAVC-I is intraframe so it doesn't have that issue, so I don't see why it would be any less an editing codec than most other intraframe codecs (Prores, DNx, AVC-Intra, etc) besides perhaps software support, which varies with all codecs. That said, I do a ton of work with AVCHD which is highly compressed and long GOP, as is XDCAM, and never had any issues with editing those, though they may have been more of a problem 5-10 years ago when more people were using NLEs and CPUs that couldn't handle codecs that rely heavily on CPU decoding.
 
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