F3: RED Epic Dragon vs Arri Amira vs Sony PMW-F3

If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times, it's crazy just how closely the F3 can hang with the big boys - and given that you're looking at a measly $3-4k for privilege these days. I think it's a no-brainer for anyone looking to get started, or in need of a solid B-cam.
 
Grug said:
If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times, it's crazy just how closely the F3 can hang with the big boys - and given that you're looking at a measly $3-4k for privilege these days. I think it's a no-brainer for anyone looking to get started, or in need of a solid B-cam.
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Definitely significantly inferior in overexposure latitude but looks to me that it beats both Dragon and Amira on underexposure side. I don't have much personal experience with F3 but makes me wonder if perhaps it is worth trading one stop in underexposure for added stop of latitude on highlights side by rating it at 1600 ISO. 1250 ISO might be the good compromise, at least in a scene like the first one.
 
This is a well done test for sure, and whenever I see these kinds of tests it seems like all the cameras (Arri, Red, Sony, etc...) are very close in quality.

However, I've been saving up for a higher end camera and I've been watching Vimeo videos till I'm blue in the face and I have to say, when you take it out of the context of a side by side comparison test into real world spots - different lighting, different locations, different skin tones, a bunch of shots cut together, etc.... I can't help but feel that Arri just seems to have the nicest overall aesthetic. While Red and Sony do a good job, it seems like most of the commercials, TV shows, movies, etc... that I find the most aesthetically pleasing seem to be done on Alexa and Amira.

And the F3, while it does well in tests like this, many overall spots done with the F3 just have this quality that I don't like. Maybe it's because Sony never offered a proper way to quickly de-log it and make it look nice easily?

Arri just seems to have figured out a good formula. I'm wondering if it's a combination of color science and larger pixels? Whatever it is, they're doing something right.
 
gene_can_sing said:
This is a well done test for sure, and whenever I see these kinds of tests it seems like all the cameras (Arri, Red, Sony, etc...) are very close in quality.

However, I've been saving up for a higher end camera and I've been watching Vimeo videos till I'm blue in the face and I have to say, when you take it out of the context of a side by side comparison test into real world spots - different lighting, different locations, different skin tones, a bunch of shots cut together, etc.... I can't help but feel that Arri just seems to have the nicest overall aesthetic. While Red and Sony do a good job, it seems like most of the commercials, TV shows, movies, etc... that I find the most aesthetically pleasing seem to be done on Alexa and Amira.

And the F3, while it does well in tests like this, many overall spots done with the F3 just have this quality that I don't like. Maybe it's because Sony never offered a proper way to quickly de-log it and make it look nice easily?

Arri just seems to have figured out a good formula. I'm wondering if it's a combination of color science and larger pixels? Whatever it is, they're doing something right.
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Be very careful you're not succumbing to the placebo effect.
And additionally not just seeing the user ability and/or budget level, rather than the camera itself. As obviously more experienced / higher budget productions go with Arri Alexa.

While cheap / rushed / newbie ones are more likely to use an F3. (Especially now in 2015)

Not saying this is *always* the case, but is the rough rule of thumb.

So once you take out those factors, the difference between that is left... would be very very small, like this test indicates.
 
gene_can_sing said:
And the F3, while it does well in tests like this, many overall spots done with the F3 just have this quality that I don't like. Maybe it's because Sony never offered a proper way to quickly de-log it and make it look nice easily?
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That's been the curse of the F3. Sony did a staggeringly bad job of supporting the F3 in post, which is a real shame, because the sensor in that camera is pure gold.

I've spent a lot of time working on a good post pipeline and it was only this past weekend that I feel i have cleared the last hurdle that has been dogging me for a long time.. I'm down to cheating one last feature by hand, but I may be able to figure out how to do it procedurally after all. It's been an ongoing process and now I'm going back to 'fix' a short I just finished, because the results I am now achieving are far better than what i had. To be honest as much as I like my F3 post production is no cakewalk. You can get staggeringly good results out of the camera, but you really have to know how to handle her.

Arri just seems to have figured out a good formula. I'm wondering if it's a combination of color science and larger pixels? Whatever it is, they're doing something right.
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Arri has an advantage that none of the other manufacturers have. More than 20 years of digitally quantifying Kodak film stocks. Their R&D goes all the way back to the Arri laser scanner and laser recorder. Basically the Alexa is a digital incarnation of Kodak Vision3. It's everything from the color science that borrows a lot from how film behaves to the sensor that does a dual gain read and emulates the shoulder roll-off you see in film.

Sony is still fighting their broadcast heritage. I think it's getting better. I feel their main problem is that they still insist on increasing saturation with brightness all the way to the highlights. They really need to stop doing that for cine cameras.

I have no idea what RED is doing. Some people love Red, some people don't.

BM seems to be doing a lot of things right, which is pretty impressive when you consider that they have only been making cameras for the past 4-5 years.
 
IronFilm said:
Be very careful you're not succumbing to the placebo effect.
And additionally not just seeing the user ability and/or budget level, rather than the camera itself. As obviously more experienced / higher budget productions go with Arri Alexa.
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I've definitely not succumbing to the Placebo effect. In fact, for a long time I thought the Alexa image was all hype until I started watching a million videos between Dragon and Alexa. Even the documentary stuff shot on the Amira just has this really nice X-Factor and I'm not imagining it. At least for me, I like it. Others might feel different.

With that said, I'm probably going to end up with a Red Weapon when the cheaper Magnesium comes out. It's quite a bit cheaper than the Alexa Mini, lot more features and way easier to rig. The Amira has an awesome image, but it's big and heavy and I need it to fit on a Ronin quickly since I'm using those on almost every shoot lately.
 
My Amira is the first camera I've ever owned where I do not have to be careful of any situation I point it at. Windows blowing out? Who cares, they still look beautiful.

Cameras are funny things. The harder you look at them, the more similar they all seem. To wit, the video that began this discussion. It's really true. You look harder under the microscope and you are drawn to the similarities, not the differences.

But when you pull back and start to just judge the greater whole and the body of work done by the camera, you start to see what cameras fall down where. It took me 2 years to understand what I didn't like about my F55 images. And the 2 years I owned the F3 plus those 55 years to figure out why my F3 work looked not so hot. You have to shoot a lot of faces with the F3 before you start going "it's ok, but there's something not as nice as the others". I stress; not one or two faces. 50, 100.

Arri has got a ton of image tuning experience that they pulled from somewhere (I assume, like Mr. Lime said, from the scanner business) that is where their magic lies. Arri had incredible amounts of wisdom knowing that they had to get that image looking right before they even had a fighting chance. Go watch the 1st season of Downton Abbey on Netflix. Shot with a D-21 with 11 stops of latitude recording to a P2 DVCPRO HD recorder. It's not always about the numbers.
 
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Dang it after seeing this I'm really tempted to make the jump. I mean I just upgraded not to long ago to the D750 but seeing these F3's for so cheap (Starcentral, was there really one for $1500 in the marketplace?) It would be nice to have an image like that along with ND's and pro audio in camera for once. Now to just crunch some numbers and justify the cost since I do more payed photo than video work, need to find me some more video clients it seems cause these student/no bugdet indie films are fun but not paying the bills enough.
 
Agree with Nate on the whole package thing. To me the camera that ticks the most boxes is my Red Dragon. The most important benefits to me being able to rig it in so many configurations and the high frame rates in 5K an 6K. I can actually ski with a fully fledged high end cinema camera in one hand and my poles in the other, the next day Rigg it for a drama shoot or tvc. I do like the look of Arri cams as well though. Sony not so much (I own a fs7 and shoot a lot with f55s)
 
If you protect the highlights the F3 has an amazing latitude in the shadows, Im thinking that I should get a LUT on my monitor that pulls up the shadows so that I can see the DR when Im shooting. Often I mistake the effective DR because I think the lows are gone, but you can actually pull them up more than you think at first, without much noise.
 
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