Other: Sony full frame unveiled, named "VENICE"

Doug Jensen said:
I've got about $60K wrapped up in my F55 hardware, not even including lenses. And the last thing I need is someone throwing around loose comments about the Sony RAW workflow being slow -- because I find that completely opposite of being true. It's comments like that which get picked up, repeated, thrown around, taken as the truth because nobody challenged it -- and before you know it clients don't want to shoot Sony RAW because they "heard" it was slow. That kind of inuendo affects me directly right in the wallet. So I honestly wanted to know how it was slower than other RAW workflows. Not having any experience myself with other RAW workflows I am not in a position to judge the relative speed so I legitimately wanted to get more details from the person who made the statement. But it turns out the person making that statement has no experience to compare to other RAW workflows, and to compound the issue, he may have actually been talking about an ancient F65 RAW workflow that has nothing to do with the F55 RAW workflow of today. So, I don't think is unreasonable to ask for additonal info and for people to be a little more precise (perhaps by saying "F65 workflow is slow") in whatever complaints they are throwing around. And as an F55 owner and RAW shooter I believe that I have a bigger stake in it, and a right to question what is being said, than people who don't. That's my 2 cents.
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Doug, you are a very knowledgeable guy when it comes to Sony and your posts are helpful. But with that one you didn't come across very well. It's not that you don't have the right to question it. Everybody does. It's your disparaging tone and putting words in his mouth. For the record Sony RAW is indeed more difficult to work with than some other RAWs. Not talking about data rate, offloading or any of that. I'm talking about the amount of time you have to spend working on Sony RAW on Davinci Resolve for example. I know it because I shot quite a bit of Sony RAW and was never happy about this part. Maybe this is part of what he means. Maybe for your type of work this is not important. But if you are mainly working with commercials and narrative this can be a problem. Just my 2 cents.
 
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Sttratos said:
Yes. This!
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Most of these shows are shot on F55.. its a fact folks.. Pro Res.. is crap .. like driving a model T Ford.. X-OCN is the way .. Arri is just paying these companies to put Alexa on the credits.. in Hollywood this is well know thing.. wake up people.. ask anyone with a Yoga mat in Santa Monica .. open your eyes .. smell the coffee ..
 
Sttratos said:
I'm talking about the amount of time you have to spend working on Sony RAW on Davinci Resolve for example. I know it because I shot quite a bit of Sony RAW and was never happy about this part.
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Would you please elaborate on the point? I find RAW to be exactly as easy to grade in Resolve (actually easier when exposure wasn't spot on) as S-LOG2 or S-LOG3 after a few menu changes at the very beginning of the session so that the RAW comes in the way I want it. What specifically about the F55 RAW workflow slows you down? I'm not trying to argue or anything, I honestly want to learn why your experience is different that my own. I love workflow and RAW is the easiest material to work with. Eaiser than XAVC.

What made you unhappy with the workflow? Seems like a reasonable question to ask.
 
Slow and fast can be so relative sometimes...in a rushed schedule, or late at night, etc...

As far as offloading Sony RAW, again this will depend on your pipeline. The fastest I can get Sony RAW from the F65 offloaded is 1hr/TB, with the high speed reader, with an SSD connected via esata straight into the card reader.

As far as working with it, it all depends on pipeline, again. Also depends on familiarity and desired look, I suppose. Below is a screen grab where literally, all I did was set resolve to ACES, select Sony RAW IDT, SRGB ODT, Kodak 5219 3D LUT, then brought back highlights and shadows to taste. That was literally less than 20 clicks, and export it into 2K ProRes4444XQ with an export speed at an average of around 50fps.

IMG_5815.jpg

Whether those numbers are fast or slow is in the eye of the beholder. Also, I don't personally have experience with ArriRAW or too much continued experience with r3d. But just thought I'd chime in with some specific numbers, just for context.
 
Yes I have the same experience with offload speeds and Sony RAW. Depends on the work and shooting ratios obviously, but I can have 2-3TB in a day and copying files major time sucker.

If I have a DMT or PA who can offload throughout the day it's great, but when that position doesn't get carved out in stone and goes to the wayside it's me who's copying cards later on one at a time, checking, rechecking, meeting client again, giving hard drive, etc..

So the speed PIA factor is all relative, based on how much you shoot in a day and all the copying that has to take place.
 
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It will be interesting to see what technology in the Sony Venice, if any, makes its way down to the lower-priced Sony cameras such as the Fs7.

Does the release of the Sony Venice squash the rumors that Sony is going to produce a replacement for the F55 / F5 that is priced in the $20-25k price range? I don't see how Sony releases such a camera without it cutting into the sales of the Venice. There isn't much room between the specs and features of the Fs7M2 and those of the Venice. A full-frame sensor internal 4K replacement for the F5 would cut into the market for the Venice.
 
Donny 123 said:
Most of these shows are shot on F55.. its a fact folks.. Pro Res.. is crap .. like driving a model T Ford.. X-OCN is the way .. Arri is just paying these companies to put Alexa on the credits.. in Hollywood this is well know thing.. wake up people.. ask anyone with a Yoga mat in Santa Monica .. open your eyes .. smell the coffee ..
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:grin: Now the sarcasm is coming through. Well, reading the first post again I should have seen it there too. But it went totally over my head.
 
Doug Jensen said:
Would you please elaborate on the point? I find RAW to be exactly as easy to grade in Resolve (actually easier when exposure wasn't spot on) as S-LOG2 or S-LOG3 after a few menu changes at the very beginning of the session so that the RAW comes in the way I want it. What specifically about the F55 RAW workflow slows you down? I'm not trying to argue or anything, I honestly want to learn why your experience is different that my own. I love workflow and RAW is the easiest material to work with. Eaiser than XAVC.

What made you unhappy with the workflow? Seems like a reasonable question to ask.
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Like I said I was not talking about offload speeds or anything like that. Although as said shooting ratios matter. Narrative many times have high shooting ratios these days. So offload speeds start to play a bigger role too. But my point was not that. My point is that it took me way longer to get the footage looking anywhere how I wanted than some other RAWs. And I only came close. Never really how I wanted. Now this is not only or really a problem with Sony RAW but also the camera itself. FS7, F5 and F55 to be specific. Couldn't get them to look how I wanted.I had to spend a lot of time on Resolve just to massage it a bit and try to make it look better. This topic has been brought up many times here by many different users. No point restarting it. I was just saying that since he brought up Sony RAW in the same post as he brought up Arri, this could be what he meant too. Arri RAW is way easier to get it to look nice. Of course this is because of the sensor too. I'm not trying to put words in his mouth and don't know if he meant it that way. I was just pointing it out that he could have and that you should try to see where he is coming from. For your work does it matter if it looks filmic? For his work maybe it does. If for yours it doesn't then it's a simple drop in Resolve, a LUT and a couple of tweaks and you might be done. But to me this and a lot more never did the trick.

Speaking for myself this is a problem I had with Sony RAW and the FS7 in particular as well as the F5 and F55 when I used them. The image would not look like I wanted. Like I said it's not really RAW's fault. But if you shoot RAW you at least have a batter chance to bring it closer. So you almost have to shoot RAW unless you want to be locked in the camera's look. But RAW is much bigger. Then you shoot RAW because of that and you have extra data to manage and have to spend a long time on grading. It would be nice if the cameras had a good look out of the box. So you could just shoot non RAW then for practicality or better, a 4K Prores option. Don't have experience with the F65 worth mentioning. But looking at movies and images from it it looks to have the same problem.

So you shoot RAW, spend a lot of time on grading massaging and still fall short. This is a way of being slower too. If it takes longer to massage the footage. This counts in the end of the day. I don't know if this is what he meant. But could have been and is sure what I mean. Hope I elaborated enough.
 
Thank you. That is exactly the kind of rational, detailed explanation I was hoping you would provide. Thanks.
 
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starcentral said:
Yes I have the same experience with offload speeds and Sony RAW. Depends on the work and shooting ratios obviously, but I can have 2-3TB in a day and copying files major time sucker..
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For people who are overwhelmed by having a lot of data to wrangle, XOCN-ST or XOCN-LT are excellent alternatives to full blown RAW. I can't see any visual difference between any of those three codecs in a causal (not with charts and scopes) comparison. I was on a 60 Minutes shoot a while back and we had four F55's shooting full RAW in long-form inteview setups. They don't even want to pause the cameras when there is a 5 minute break. Now that was a lot of data!!
 
Sttratos said:
Like I said I was not talking about offload speeds or anything like that. Although as said shooting ratios matter. Narrative many times have high shooting ratios these days. So offload speeds start to play a bigger role too. But my point was not that. My point is that it took me way longer to get the footage looking anywhere how I wanted than some other RAWs. And I only came close. Never really how I wanted. Now this is not only or really a problem with Sony RAW but also the camera itself. FS7, F5 and F55 to be specific. Couldn't get them to look how I wanted.I had to spend a lot of time on Resolve just to massage it a bit and try to make it look better. This topic has been brought up many times here by many different users. No point restarting it. I was just saying that since he brought up Sony RAW in the same post as he brought up Arri, this could be what he meant too. Arri RAW is way easier to get it to look nice. Of course this is because of the sensor too. I'm not trying to put words in his mouth and don't know if he meant it that way. I was just pointing it out that he could have and that you should try to see where he is coming from. For your work does it matter if it looks filmic? For his work maybe it does. If for yours it doesn't then it's a simple drop in Resolve, a LUT and a couple of tweaks and you might be done. But to me this and a lot more never did the trick.

Speaking for myself this is a problem I had with Sony RAW and the FS7 in particular as well as the F5 and F55 when I used them. The image would not look like I wanted. Like I said it's not really RAW's fault. But if you shoot RAW you at least have a batter chance to bring it closer. So you almost have to shoot RAW unless you want to be locked in the camera's look. But RAW is much bigger. Then you shoot RAW because of that and you have extra data to manage and have to spend a long time on grading. It would be nice if the cameras had a good look out of the box. So you could just shoot non RAW then for practicality or better, a 4K Prores option. Don't have experience with the F65 worth mentioning. But looking at movies and images from it it looks to have the same problem.

So you shoot RAW, spend a lot of time on grading massaging and still fall short. This is a way of being slower too. If it takes longer to massage the footage. This counts in the end of the day. I don't know if this is what he meant. But could have been and is sure what I mean. Hope I elaborated enough.
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With all due respect, you keep saying that you couldnt get the look you wanted, but nowhere do you say what this is. Still seems very vague. What is this mysterious look that you are speaking of ? Further, you say they dont look filmic. Just what is filmic for you? I have the sense that there is a bit of chasing a holy grail here, but perhaps I am being unfair. My apologies if I come off that way...
 
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yoclay said:
With all due respect, you keep saying that you couldnt get the look you wanted, but nowhere do you say what this is. Still seems very vague. What is this mysterious look that you are speaking of ? Further, you say they dont look filmic. Just what is filmic for you? I have the sense that there is a bit of chasing a holy grail here, but perhaps I am being unfair. My apologies if I come off that way...
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Fair question. The look I wanted is filmic. Also the so called mojo. What's filmic for me? The Alexa and F35 are filmic for example. The Venice is showing promise. But like I said this topic has been discussed ad nauseam here. About a year or so ago there was a thread started by a F55 owner basically complaining about the same thing. Then the thread was pulled. If I remember well because the discussion became too heated. People were defending the camera or the brand and accusing of not being a good DP. Saying the usual that mojo is lighting, production design etc, etc, etc. I myself did all to no avail. Until I got sick of it. Several other users have mentioned it too. Many of these users who had the same complains as I jumped ship to Arri. Not worth it to start the endless discussion again. Like I said I just wanted to point out to Doug that this could have been one of the reasons for the complain about Sony RAW. So he could see where it could be coming from and that maybe slow didn't mean just slow as a workflow or data wrangling.
 
I'm really liking what I'm seeing from the Sony Venice. I think this is the most exciting camera announcement since the Alexa. Looking forward to the first movie shot on it.
 
And, here's "Dig" in 4K on YouTube (been up since the 19th, if it's not been posted before).

 
The camera looks really good. I hope this time Sony will properly promote the camera. Not let it fall through the cracks like they did with the F35 and F65. There is not much interest for it here or in similar forums because 99% of the people here can't afford it. But looks like Sony has a winner with the Venice. They should promote it to the right people so it can gain some traction.
 
Sttratos said:
The camera looks really good. I hope this time Sony will properly promote the camera. Not let it fall through the cracks like they did with the F35 and F65. There is not much interest for it here or in similar forums because 99% of the people here can't afford it. But looks like Sony has a winner with the Venice. They should promote it to the right people so it can gain some traction.
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Deakins, people love Deakins. Pay Deakins to shoot the next bond or coen bro film on the VENICE :beer:
 
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