F3: PIX 240 444 RBG out of the F - amazing

eddavid

eddavid

Carbonite Member
just played with the PIX 240 going to pro res 4444 from the f3.

wow

that's pretty amazing.

I shot in the worse flourescent light environment of all time and pulled beautiful skin tones out so easily.

F3 still has some life in it, that beautiful little camera that could.
Chug and chug and chug away little friend!

You will survive!
 
I don't have anything I can share, but I can definitely agree with Ed's observation about RGB 444 ProRes 4444 to the Pix240.

Meanwhile, I have a Blackmagic Camera for a week. The reviewer before me left his footage on the SSD and it is stunning. Shooting with it in Queens Wed and hopefully will have some Times Square night shots before it has to go back to Blackmagic.

Haven't bothered with ProRes or DNxHD. I just love Raw. Footage comes right into Resolve. By default, Resolve applies the Rec709 LUT, which us actually quite good. Or reset clip to Log and do a one light in the raw settings.

Bottom line-- ProRes 4444 to the Pix looks great.

Any log footage is amazing in how you can push it.

Ned
 
That we even need to point out that the F3 is still a good camera is just ridiculous and shows the marketing driven fanboy world we live in today. Camera people have become iPhone users. If companies release another camera in 6 months, the F55 will no longer be good enough, because they have to have the latest and the "old" camera which was just awesome yesterday will magically break. This makes me sick!
 
Put the Pix on my F3 and F35 and shot some exposure charts in 444... I'll try to post some today.
On the BMCC, it's pretty awesome and it's $3k with Resolve! It has some severe color-aliasing, and moire, but it's $3k with Resolve!

I'm in for an M43 version, for sure. Selling my EF mount version due to lensing issues.

Did I mention, it's $3k with Resolve!?
 
So to put this into some context: what would there be to choose between an F3 + Pix240 and an F5? The F3 combination (at current market prices for used F3s) still comes in well under the F5 without the AXS-R5. I'm still trying to sort out what I am seeing in Dig, sensor, shutter, 4k down convert, glass?
 
LyleGorch said:
So to put this into some context: what would there be to choose between an F3 + Pix240 and an F5? The F3 combination (at current market prices for used F3s) still comes in well under the F5 without the AXS-R5. I'm still trying to sort out what I am seeing in Dig, sensor, shutter, 4k down convert, glass?
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Well what do you see in "Dig"? What do you like not like about it, which scenes in particular?

To me none of the low contrast scenes have a look you wouldn't get on a DSLR or F3. It's the high contrast scenes or scenes with highlights that are more reminiscent of plastic clippy looking video. I saw some of that in 'Dig' and 'Contract' and if they shot either of these in raw then they either exposed too high or did not bother to manage the highlights in post which with the linear gamma format you have severe latitude in post to do so.

I don't know about the F5, but I saw the F55/RED/Alexa clipping test and the F55 similar to the Alexa is doing something in-camera to handle the highlights before the signal is stored to the recording format. More tests are needed but if the F5 is also capable of doing this then that will be the biggest difference between the F5/F35 and the F3. The F3 does absolutely no highlight management in camera from what I've seen.
 
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Tell me more about the settings/connection between the F3 and the PIX. Were you shooting S-Log? Do you have the S-Log gamma upgrade option on the F3 to give you 4:4:4 out of the camera or were you sending 4:2:2 out? Does recording at 4:4:4 make a difference if the camera is just sending out 4:2:2?
 
I have to say that since paying dearly for the S-Log gamma upgrade, I felt compelled to use it and although the LUT's are nice, recently I have found that being able to white balance rather than being limited to 5600 or 3200 and trying to adjust in post, has produced much nicer images even with 422 Prores HQ on the Samurai. At first I tried this outdoors and was amazed how much better the images were once de-logged without much color manipulation. For indoors I had assumed that my Kino Flo 5500 lights were fine at 5600 but on the F3 they white balance to about 6100 and this also makes a huge difference. Since this is not RAW, the baked in white balance makes a big difference and getting it correct initially rather than in post, at least for me, has made a huge difference. It is more difficult to be certain on exposure without the LUT's but with a light meter, that problem is solved. It might be fine to use gels/filters in a carefully controlled situation to match the camera settings with the upgrade enabled, but overall, I find it easier to avoid it. That being said, if I did have a PIX and could shoot 444, maybe the extra color information would overcome this issue.
 
100% agree with you. I have the paid S-Log as well but most of the time I use the Picture Profile version so as to be able to white balance. Definitely makes post a little easier for me and for clients I hand the footage off to. I also have a Samurai but very curious to test out a Pix at 444 on my F3 and on the F5 until SR recording is enabled.

On a side note, last night I watched a rough version of a doc I filmed in Jan. and god damn if the F3 footage didnt look fantastic. Makes me wonder even harder why Im getting a F5. Oh yeah; 60-120p, SR, 4K, RAW etc. -I will however be happily surprised if images from the F5 in a Hypergamma mode in XAVC HD look any better then the F3 w/Samurai. We'll see..
 
starcentral said:
Well what do you see in "Dig"? What do you like not like about it, which scenes in particular?
Click to expand...

Sorry for the misunderstanding, actually I dig "Dig", and although I have not seen a lot of F3 used for dramatic, what F3 material I've seen doesn't look as good to me. I think I've narrowed it down to the way that detail is maintained in motion, and I suspect that is related to the 4K original and global shutter.
 
I too have only ever used picture profile SLOG. Well actually its because I don't own the paid version :cool:

I agree that white balancing or being able to dial in your color temp. is an added bonus for sure.

LyleGorch said:
Sorry for the misunderstanding, actually I dig "Dig", and although I have not seen a lot of F3 used for dramatic, what F3 material I've seen doesn't look as good to me. I think I've narrowed it down to the way that detail is maintained in motion, and I suspect that is related to the 4K original and global shutter.
Click to expand...

Oh you mean you haven't seen Spike Lee's film shot on the F3? :happy:
 
starcentral said:
Oh you mean you haven't seen Spike Lee's film shot on the F3? :happy:
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I've read about Red Hook Summer but it is actually unavailable for me due to rights restrictions (I'm not in the US right now). So are you saying Red Hook Summer looks better than Dig?

Did you sell your F3?
 
sorry my sarcasm doesn't always come through in writing.. :embarasse Red Hook Summer is very bad example of "filmic" F3... you can watch trailer online. If you google "see whats shot on f3" you can find a site that I put together with a bit of help from a fellow DVX'ers. I'm not allowed to post links to websites that are mine, mods delete them.

F3 is near sold, but I'll know more at the end of the week.
 
Well my BMC (and more importantly Resolve) finally arrived today.

Well actually that's not true. I called my dealer asking if I was ever going to get my camera and he said 'Oh, actually I've got one here right now'. So I had to drive down and collect it... but let's not get into that.

I'm really keen to do more work with 4:2:2 SLOG in Resolve, it's vastly superior to the in-NLE colour correction tools I've been using to date. But what I'm really hoping for is for Sony to standardise 4:4:4 and LUTs across their entire F3 range with a firmware update around NAB. If that doesn't happen... well I suppose I'll pony up the cash and buy the upgrade.

10-bit, 4:4:4, white-balanced SLOG from the F3 should see me sitting pretty for a long time to come.
 
Resolve has a Sony SLog2 to Rec709 LUT. I don't think it is that great, but it is a starting point.

I was in an all-day shoot yesterday with the BMCC they sent me for review. Don't mean to hijack thread, but camera has some nice features. But DOF isn't as shallow as Super35 cameras and we really needed that yesterday. No audio meters, but took Thunderbolt out from camera to my MBPro Retina and used ScopeBox both for scopes and audio levels. Skin tones look very nice.

Ned
 
starcentral said:
sorry my sarcasm doesn't always come through in writing.. :embarasse Red Hook Summer is very bad example of "filmic" F3... you can watch trailer online. If you google "see whats shot on f3" you can find a site that I put together with a bit of help from a fellow DVX'ers. I'm not allowed to post links to websites that are mine, mods delete them.

F3 is near sold, but I'll know more at the end of the week.
Click to expand...

I saw "Safety Not Guaranteed" the other night on Netflix and just found out through your website, it was shot on the F3. Best thing I have seen coming out the F3 so far IMHO. While watching I wasn´t really thinking what camera it was shot on, but I was wondering, why the flic looked so "indie". The picture just wasn´t "rich" or "creamy", but this for me helped establish the strange mood of the movie.
 
eddavid said:
just played with the PIX 240 going to pro res 4444 from the f3.

wow

that's pretty amazing.

I shot in the worse flourescent light environment of all time and pulled beautiful skin tones out so easily.

F3 still has some life in it, that beautiful little camera that could.
Chug and chug and chug away little friend!

You will survive!
Click to expand...

Tell me more about the settings/connection between the F3 and the PIX. Were you shooting S-Log? Do you have the S-Log gamma upgrade option on the F3 to give you 4:4:4 out of the camera or were you sending 4:2:2 out? Does recording at 4:4:4 make a difference if the camera is just sending out 4:2:2?
 
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