Other: Outdoor documentary,islands, woodlands which Sony camera

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Publimix

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Which camera would you prefer for an outdoor documentary series involving stunning landscapes and nature. (4K).

Shall I hire a cameraman/owner with:
Sony F55
Sony FX9
Sony FX6
Arri (might be too expensive).

I like the F55 look and the Arri look, but is the difference worth the money?
 
The person behind the camera is more important than the camera.

You can get interesting and appealing looks from any of those systems, or complete garbage.

Most would agree ARRI if operated by someone good and graded nicely for your purpose - and also because landscapes and nature might involve difficult dynamic range situations - but the others can easily work, too.
 
personally id suggest the fx9 or fx6

they have autofocus that can track animals

they are light enough to carry to remote locations

the fx9 might have a chunkier file
 
Yeah, very valid - and electric variable ND would be a treat.

[Several ARRIs have NDs too, but Sony's system is the best.]
 
Publimix said:
Which camera would you prefer for an outdoor documentary series involving stunning landscapes and nature. (4K).

Shall I hire a cameraman/owner with:
Sony F55
Sony FX9
Sony FX6
Arri (might be too expensive).

I like the F55 look and the Arri look, but is the difference worth the money?
Click to expand...


Really depends on who they are, how they shoot, and what they own or could own. You can get an F55 on ebay for $4K these days too.


The FX9
if you are going to run one and only one camera. it has the 4K s35 crop for extra reach, and the 6K FF35 for richly detailed 4K wides. Internal ND robust etc etc.



Fx6+A1
the stills camera can shoot additional footage, as well as the occasional 8K wides or drones. As well as doing s35 4K for longer reach. These may allow for animal autofocus. This would likely be my preference. Best low light for blue hour and perhaps a little beyond.


F55
If you have a tight budget and buying used, this is an amazing option.


Audio is another consideration, nature can be noisy, but sometimes the thing you want to here is a little further away and for that you want good moca and clean clean clean preamps.

If recording direct sound to camera, considering picking up some good preamps you can bolt onto the camera.
 
Publimix said:
Which camera would you prefer for an outdoor documentary series involving stunning landscapes and nature. (4K).

Shall I hire a cameraman/owner with:
Sony F55
Sony FX9
Sony FX6
Arri (might be too expensive).
I like the F55 look and the Arri look, but is the difference worth the money?
Click to expand...

The FX9 or the F55 shooting RAW. Depends a lot on what lenses someone has at their disposal.
The FX6 is good for what it is, but it's not a "stunning" camera.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think only the Arri LF can shoot 4K. So that eliminates all the rest of the Arri cameras.
If you didn't go Sony, I'd look at RED.
 
OP, if you'd consider RED (which is what I would actually choose and what several big networks use for stuff like that), watch some of the 'Collective' series (if you want), like the one below.

Some beautiful motion pictures:

 
Gemini and Monstro have plenty of dynamic range, and do have that extra sparkle and high end sheen over the Baby Cinealtas.

It would depend on the goals of the project whether that would show through. The gap is not enough that i would choose them for nature. i feel people are only critical of images of people, and everything else is more about splashes of colour, as long as there is no clipping in the highlights.

The other aspect, and this may not apply to the Monstro, which seems to have the best colour of all the RED’s, that the Sony F55 colour felt more right to me when directly compared to a Komodo.

Another thing is low light, if you ever end up in low light, then the FX6 can outshine the Gemini and in a sense end up looking more refined. In LL mode, the Gemini loses its latitude advantage anyway.
 
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Publimix said:
Which camera would you prefer for an outdoor documentary series involving stunning landscapes and nature. (4K).

Shall I hire a cameraman/owner with:
Sony F55
Sony FX9
Sony FX6
Arri (might be too expensive).

I like the F55 look and the Arri look, but is the difference worth the money?
Click to expand...

As Doug says , only LF is 4K , and the Arri 65mm . Its amazing how many directors / producers don't know this , they are amazed when you tell them Alexa / Amira is no where near 4K ..
 
Doug Jensen said:
The FX9 or the F55 shooting RAW. Depends a lot on what lenses someone has at their disposal.
The FX6 is good for what it is, but it's not a "stunning" camera.
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The FX6 and FX9 are two cameras i haven’t directly compared. What do you feel gives the FX9 the edge in image quality? clarity, colour, codec? Does raw out of the FX6 level the field?
 
In a thread like this, it's only right that one of Doug's videos should be mandatory...so much variety in this one:

 
James0b57 said:
The FX6 and FX9 are two cameras i haven’t directly compared. What do you feel gives the FX9 the edge in image quality? clarity, colour, codec? Does raw out of the FX6 level the field?
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Sorry, I missed your post. Two things make the image quality of FX9 better that the FX6. First, the FX9 has a 6K sensor and that alone creates a noticeably superior 4K image. And second, the FX9 has far more paint menus, so the image can be customized better onboard the camera to suit different shooting situations and styles. Recording RAW out of the FX6 helps with #2, if you want that workflow, but does nothing to address #1. I like my FX6 and it has a lot going for it, but the image quality is not as good as some other cameras.
 
Doug Jensen said:
Sorry, I missed your post. Two things make the image quality of FX9 better that the FX6. First, the FX9 has a 6K sensor and that alone creates a noticeably superior 4K image. And second, the FX9 has far more paint menus, so the image can be customized better onboard the camera to suit different shooting situations and styles. Recording RAW out of the FX6 helps with #2, if you want that workflow, but does nothing to address #1. I like my FX6 and it has a lot going for it, but the image quality is not as good as some other cameras.
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I think i get what you mean.

In a slightly related way, i compared the Sony F35 to the Sony A7S2 once, and while they were comparably spec ‘d in some ways, the F35 was much more articulate in a way, the colours held together and represented the scene in a confident way. Perhaps a bigger difference between them than the FX6 and FX9, yet i’d imagine it to be something of that.

Well, i certainly thought you made the FX6 work well in some of the nature clips i’ve seen, and it certainly caused me to pause when thinking whether to go FX9 or FX6.

I compared the FX9, C500ii, and the Red Gemini, and it was a rather interesting comparison, because they all gave a uniquely good performance. Shows that specs and aren’t everything.

Anyway, i think your work makes me consider the FX6 more than just about anything else i’ve seen. You’ve managed to bring a high quality feel to it all, that i’d not see quite done as well yet.
 
Thanks for the compliments. I'm certainly not saying that the FX6 isn't a very good camera and capable of producing nice images, but with that said, it would be an even better camera if it had a 6K sensor. Fortunately, picture quality isn't the only thing that matters, and when you factor in 4K @ 120 fps, FF sensor, price, size, weight, audio, codecs, S&Q Motion + Picture Cache, and killer auto-focus, there isn't another camera that can match it.
 
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I bought FX9 to shoot forests, mountains, outdoors, in that delicious 6K FF quality. FX6 was not released at the time of purchase, i would probably have gotten FX6 as a compromise. But i dont regret my purchase, the quality is amazing. 4K 100 fps i get from my FX3 that i also carry in my pack.

The nature documentaries i have seen that i have felt had really stunning imagery, have almost exclusively been RED cameras with a proper photographer behind it, and proper color grading in post! Most of the F55 i have seen, is very good. But its not RED + Davinci good. The costs are better however, and the Sonys are way faster to work with. Internal NDs for one. Form factor, moisture resistance, VERY easy to pack into my F-stop bag. I only adjust my VF and microphone to fit it all fully rigged.

Only go RED if you have the budget for the post production.

As a side note, i purchased Planet Earth II on 4K HDR Bluray and viewed it on my Sony OLED Dolby Vision screen. 99% of people will not notice it, but oh did i notice lens faults and camera quality degredation during slow motion! Soft images, chroma from hell, macro blocking, i saw it all... And its supposed to be the creme de la creme in nature docs. The content shot is more important than the feature film quality.
 
Publimix said:
Which camera would you prefer for an outdoor documentary series involving stunning landscapes and nature. (4K).

Shall I hire a cameraman/owner with:
Sony F55
Sony FX9
Sony FX6
Arri (might be too expensive).

I like the F55 look and the Arri look, but is the difference worth the money?
Click to expand...

I shoot a lot of wildlife and landscapes in my work and in my opinion out of these cameras I would be choosing between either the FX6 or FX9.

The FX9 will produce a slightly better image under good lighting conditions, especially in terms of overall detail. The 6K sensor on it is fantastic, and while it doesn't actually record 6K, its 4K files are stunning. You also get 4K in Super35 crop mode which will give you an additional 1.5x crop on your full frame glass which is going to be very useful for filming nature/wildlife.

The FX6 on the other hand is way easier to pack in due to its size and weight. It also is much better in lowlight than any of the other cameras you mentioned, giving it a massive edge when filming nature as a lot of animals won't give you "the shot" until it's dimly lit out, whether that's early in the morning or late in the evening. And if you're filming anything at night, well, the FX6 will be hard to beat. And while the FX6 cannot record 4K in Super35 mode, it does have another trick up its sleeve which is 4K 120p, something the FX9 cannot do. 4K 120p is a beautiful combination when filming wildlife.

Both cameras have their strengths and both would work very well for landscape and nature docs. Both give you internal ND and great autofocus which you won't get with a RED. So from that standpoint I feel like they are great options for this type of work. Plus, both cameras have been improved greatly in their overall color science which gives them a much more pleasing image in log than what their previous cameras (FS7/FS5) produced.

For me, I chose the FX6. Coming from the FS7/FS7II, I wanted a lighter camera to pack in and that's what won me over. It's much more enjoyable hiking into a location with the FX6 than it ever was with either of my FS7s, and if you are happier on your shoot, it will translate over into your work. Plus, the FX6's lowlight capabilities has been extremely useful for my nature work, and now that the FX6 received an update with cache recording, I feel like it's the perfect tool for this kind of work, for me.
 
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Joshua Milligan said:
. . . and now that the FX6 received an update with cache recording, I feel like it's the perfect tool for this kind of work, for me.
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It is well worth mentioning that the FX6 is the first and only Sony camera that allows you to use Cache and 120 fps 4K slow-motion simultaneously. This feature is really a game changer for sports, wildlife, etc. We've been dreaming of having this capability for years, and now we finally have have it.
 
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