FS5: Paid RAW Upgrade in June 500€ / 600$

For me the question is if it will be worthwile to switch from my GH4 to an FS5 - both with external recorders. So it is a question about the advantages of the larger sensor with the slightly better DR, the better handling of the FS5 and the quality advantage from Sony raw with up to 4K 50p. Without the raw advantage the FS5 seems to be mature to me - a great camera, but in UHD a 8 bit camera. And I do not earn my money with the camera up to now, but it is the way to waste my money earned in my bread-and- butter job. ;)
 
wschmid said:
For me the question is if it will be worthwile to switch from my GH4 to an FS5 - both with external recorders. So it is a question about the advantages of the larger sensor with the slightly better DR, the better handling of the FS5 and the quality advantage from Sony raw with up to 4K 50p. Without the raw advantage the FS5 seems to be mature to me - a great camera, but in UHD a 8 bit camera. And I do not earn my money with the camera up to now, but it is the way to waste my money earned in my bread-and- butter job. ;)
Click to expand...
Well then, you definitely want to go with the FS5. It is much
more expensive than the GH4, allowing you to waste much more
of your money from your bread and butter job on it...........wait,
you didn't want to waste more money?.........nevermind then..........
:)
 
wschmid said:
For me the question is if it will be worthwile to switch from my GH4 to an FS5 - both with external recorders. So it is a question about the advantages of the larger sensor with the slightly better DR, the better handling of the FS5 and the quality advantage from Sony raw with up to 4K 50p. Without the raw advantage the FS5 seems to be mature to me - a great camera, but in UHD a 8 bit camera. And I do not earn my money with the camera up to now, but it is the way to waste my money earned in my bread-and- butter job. ;)
Click to expand...

I still have the GH4 and now the FS5, and I like the FS5 a lot more. Better image quality in-camera. I'm on the fence as far as 2nd cameras go. I was thinking that the GH5 will probably be really cool, but ultimately the color between the two cameras is different. I'm sure one could tweak the GH4 to match the FS5. I haven't seen anything about matching the GH5 ad FS5 in any forums yet. Anyway, I hardly touch my GH4 any more. As for external recorders the Atomos stuff looks so much nicer than the Convergent Design's one. I'm waiting to see all if it in someone's hands before making any decisions.
 
If you have the FS5 and the GH4, I understand that you do not tough the GH4 anymore! :) The FS5 is superior in the overall handling I think.

But on the other hand, the FS5 is a little bit outdated given the HDMI 1.4 and the SDI 3G, the internal recording with XAVC-L. HD is fine in 10bit 422 but UHD is similar to the GH4 with 8bit 420 only. This is the ugly side.

I have been convinced by this thread that the Sony raw option together with either an Atomos or an Convergent Design recorder will deliver great footage very likely. I do not expect a significant difference in Quality between both Atomos and Convergent Design. At the moment I use my first Shogun but that works up to UHD 30p only - but a new Recorder will be necessary anyway for Shooting UHD/4K 50p/60p.

So if you have to decide now about to purchase the FS5, you have to balance the pros and contras. Yesterday I have done a longer shooting with the GH4 and the Shogun - and well, the footage is not so bad. Grading that with Resolve is still a good exercise and delivers good results.

So from the todays perspective I will wait for the first reviews of the FS5 and the new raw option. Sure we could end up with a GH5 at end of this year, but also with the new Panasonic Camcorders AG-UX180 announced at the NAB but with 1 inch sensors only. Here even a GH5 will be better very likely. From that side I am really thinking about the FS5 with super 35mm together with an external Recorder.
 
Kinok said:
The FS700 did not have the same problem with RAW output because it had less dynamic range than the FS7. The problem with the FS7 RAW output, according to those links I cited above, is that it tries to fit 14 stops of DR into a 12 Bit linear container.

The FS5 most certainly has the same wide dynamic range as its twin the FS7, so it will have the same problem in 12 Bit linear RAW. ProRes, however, is a different matter and seems to work very well on the FS7 through the XDCA unit to internal recording or to an external recorder such as the Odyssey.
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When all that first started i had a bunch of FS7 RAW DNGs. The issue was that the least significant bits of the data were padded with 0. So in the shadows there was a lot less available precision and coupled with the fact that the FS7 bakes white balance in it was clear that the tonality wasn't there. I don't have an FS7 but i was under the impression that this was all sorted by Sony.

The other issue with RAW is that if you look at the raw data you see that the green is more sensitive than the other channels, and when you go from RAW to an image you really need to take that into account and perform highlight recovery - there's a good chance that this is what the camera is doing internally and would easily lead to different ranges.

I wrote a post about cDNG and the FS700 in particular:

http://blog.inventome.com/Blog/2014/7/insidecdng/Inside-cDNG-Files

As for 14 stops in 12 bits, the FS700 and the FS7 have subtle s curves on the linear data, which helps compress the range. Without going back into the whole range issues again in my experience the range out of the FS7 and FS700 is pretty much the same to my eye.

As Olaf says, the 4K RAW out of the FS700 is actually damn good, way way better than any internal codec recording off these cameras but it's also a total dog to work with, in terms of size and also workflow with colorspaces, because the RAW colorspace is out of gamut for sRGB. So if your RAW debayer works in sRGB it is very very easily to clip and munge reds so they look bloody awful.

I would imagine the FS5 would be similar to the FS700, the compressed RAW is AFAIK the same and the workflow would be the same with the O7Q recorders.

But, assuming Sony have fixed any recording issues, the raw off any camera should be better than a codec on numerous levels

cheers
Paul
 
Yes it is a great blog. So you think that the raw of the FS5 will be even better the internal
XAVC FS7 footage?
 
Even recording with a Shogun without the RAW upgrade on the FS5 looks better than the FS7. This video shows that.
 
Chadfish said:
Even recording with a Shogun without the RAW upgrade on the FS5 looks better than the FS7. This video shows that.
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But that is a comparision that I would not accept really - because here he compares 8bit 420 with 10bit 422 footage. And how the footage Looks like if you have to grade it significant would be complete different Story.
 
Just saying that the noise in the printer you see with the FS5 does away, and even looks better than the FS7 when using the Shogun. I believe he did grade the footage too. If course I'm waiting for the Raw Upgrade and the Inferno, but I'm just saying that you can greatly improve the FS5 image right now with an external recorder.
 
Chadfish said:
Just saying that the noise in the printer you see with the FS5 does away, and even looks better than the FS7 when using the Shogun. I believe he did grade the footage too. If course I'm waiting for the Raw Upgrade and the Inferno, but I'm just saying that you can greatly improve the FS5 image right now with an external recorder.
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i don't see how this would be possible....FS5 has 8bit out...even if you record in 10bit, the data coming in is still 8bit....no matter what is done with it....

i am really interested to see what the raw upgrade with external recorder solution (Q7 or inferno) can do on the FS5....
i never liked the external FS7 raw solution (size, weight, price) and never really thought it provided improved files (over the excellent internal 10bit)...this raw solution for the FS5 will obviously be a much better one when it comes to ergonomics and price and it should obviously be a major step up in terms of file quality....
but IMO neither of these cameras is a "raw" camera...they are great at what they do and can do but if i really needed raw i would go with RED or BM (yes, i am aware of the magenta issue)....
 
Paul schefz said:
i don't see how this would be possible....FS5 has 8bit out...even if you record in 10bit, the data coming in is still 8bit....no matter what is done with it....

i am really interested to see what the raw upgrade with external recorder solution (Q7 or inferno) can do on the FS5....
i never liked the external FS7 raw solution (size, weight, price) and never really thought it provided improved files (over the excellent internal 10bit)...this raw solution for the FS5 will obviously be a much better one when it comes to ergonomics and price and it should obviously be a major step up in terms of file quality....
but IMO neither of these cameras is a "raw" camera...they are great at what they do and can do but if i really needed raw i would go with RED or BM (yes, i am aware of the magenta issue)....
Click to expand...

What we're seeing in the video is the benefit of having more Mbps in the recording. You can see the noise goes away even at 8 bit. As for actual RAW, I don't care about it. The RAW upgrade is only what I have to go through to get ProResLT 10 bit 422 in 4K. It's sort of like with my quadcopter, the DJI Inspire. They have hobbled it to only record at 60mbps at 4k, which is so weak, but they have a Micro 4/3 sensor camera camera with an SSD available that records RAW. RAW is nothing I need, but I have to buy the RAW system so I can downrez it to ProResLT or whatever. That's annoying. In the case of the Inspire, I wish they would just make the camera have a ProRes option. We're still in a transitional time for all this tech. They have the solutions, but they are still holding them hostage to put things in higher price points.
 
The reason for that are the outdated interfaces on both the FS7 but also the FS5. What do you expect from a system offering 3G SDI only? Or HDMI 1.4? With 12G SDI and HDMI 2.0 that would not be an issue at all!
 
The FS7 has HDMI 2.0. It is not an outdated standard at all, in fact it's pretty much top of the line. It can output DCI 4K60p.

It also uses 3G-SDI for the RAW output. This is in part because 6G and 12G are NOT accepted SMPTE or IBU standards, and Sony does not like to issue technology that does not meet internationally accepted broadcast standards. Black magic Design essentially made up its own standard. It's based on a reasonable expectation as to what could become a standard, but it certainly is not an existing one.
 
Accoding to an information of Sony the FS7 can output via HDMI 4K 50p with 8bit 420 only. With HDMI 2 I would have expected here 10bit 422. The FS5 can output 8bit by HDMI only, even with UHD 30p. Explain me why that should not be outdated. Even the old GH4 delivers 10bit 422 with HDMI.
 
Wolfgang, I believe you are incorrect. I'm quite positive the FS7 HDMI output is 4:2:2 and about 95% positive that it is 10-bit. Please show me the Sony literature that states otherwise.
 
It was a communication between Sony and one of the users that was published by this user, in my German forum videotreffpunkt.com. They stated that the FS7 delivers via the HDMI 10bit 422 up to UHD 30p only, but not for UHD 50p/60p.
 
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