F3: The Art & Technology of the F3

I think the best advice here is turning down the jobs that raise red flags all together (no pun intended when I say 'red').

Today I managed to circle back on a job I walked away from where we were just unable to reach any terms on. I found out they ended up borrowing or getting their hands on a BMC and it turned out to be quite a disaster. Probably not the camera, just the fact that quite often its the skill behind what makes a specific camera shine that is far more important than the camera itself.

Hope some lessons were learned, but glad I wasn't part of it.
 
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You can't fight what they want, if they are set on it. If you want the job.

You can very gently push, but in the end you do it at your own peril. You just have to decide if they or the job is otherwise worth it.

And btw, a Sony camera never, ever wins these arguments. Until the day when most of the F5/55 footage on Vimeo looks like Alexa or Red, it just ain't going to happen.
 
There's a really important lesson here though. This may apply more to anyone that's been doing this over 7 or 8 years.

A veteran DP once said, "You get more work from saying no than saying yes." and he's damn right. The second someone tells me what camera is needed will now be when I back out of their useless project; it's becoming more and more a great indicator of the whole.
 
Vince did you see Adam's first "big" film, Tactical Force? No idea what it was shot on, but thought it was pretty good. Haven't seen Sharknado 1 and had no idea there was a 2.
 
No I haven't. That kind of title would keep me away normally but I'll look for it. Yeah Sharknado was a big deal in the Cheese/B-Movie world this week in the US since "2" just came out on the Sci-Fi channel. It's a great example of how bad a red can look. I don't think there is one shot in the entire thing that looks decent, and forget about skin tones. It be would another great example to show one of these ignorant producers to help explain how "its not the camera".
 
VinceinLA said:
And this is word for word- Director: "Yeah well I have an editor that just makes red footage look SO HUGE and cinematic and it's because of the camera so we need to use a red"...
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I've run in to this so many times. The minute I hear the Epic cool-aid speech I basically get up and walk away, because I know I'm dealing with a bunch of amateurs and I'm just headed for a bag of hurt. There is a very large block of people in this business, who really are clueless and the majority of their knowledge comes from internet forums and the marketing bulls*it they hear from the various companies. The liberalization of movie making equipment has cut both ways. The lowered cost of entry has made it possible for people to shoot projects that in the film days would have been prohibitively expensive to produce. But at the same time it has also opened the floodgates for anyone who can afford a camera to claim that they are a DoP. And that has completely undermined the authority and position of the DoP, unless you are working at the highest levels of this business. I own an F3. But guess what? That doesn't make me a DOP. Not by a long shot. I'm a director with a background in still photography (film) and visual effects.

Ten years ago you really, really had to know what you were doing before anyone let you DoP a project and the judgement of the DoP was trusted and respected. Directors and producers weren't under the impression that they were a DoP because they shoot their kids with a BMC or GH4 and 'it looks as good as an Alexa'.

As much as I like my F3, I would never insist on shooting with it if I knew that another camera was a better TOOL for the job at hand. But that implies that you have done your research and are willing to accept the facts, instead of tying your sense of self worth to a brand or buying in to a marketing slogan.
 
I'd say it's harder to get the look of film from digital, and getting it means meticulous lighting compared to film, then some very serious decent post work as well.
 
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Harry Lime said:
The biggest problem I have encountered with the F3 is in post. I don't know many people who properly de-log and normalize their footage. Even Davinci 10 did a poor job at that (v11 may be better). I finally managed to set up a pipeline in NUKE that handles the footage properly and extracts every bit of information from the files, turning the camera in to a whole different beast. I'm still very happy with my F3.
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Could you go into more detail about your process? I'd be very interested to hear about it.
 
Hi Nate...if you are still around this forum can you please send a valid link to this LUT you created to imitate the Arri LUT on the F3? Here are some shots of my son I shot with my F3 using a hard reflector and recording on the Odyssey 7Q ProRes HQ 422 and using the ARRI_EE_LogC_R709 LUT in the 7Q and in Avid MC to de-log https://vimeo.com/148534341 Thank you!

Sebastian
 
If you mean the experimental slog1 to LC709A I created you can download it here: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?323095-Sony-F3-Resurrection-The-New-Chapter

Paul Christopher also experimented heavily with various LUTs in post with some amazing results: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?336897-Reaching-for-a-more-F35-look

Lastly, through LUTCALC it should be possible to create a proper 3D LUT to take SLOG1 to LC709A. I don't use this software, but maybe Ben who wrote the program can guide you through it.
 
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