Why F3 over Red One ?

Shoot both yourself, and ask about F3 quality and settings here, and ask about red and settings and how to shot on REDuser, you will get much more accurate answers and far less people who have agendas to spread poking at other camera's or whatever. it's obvious people can't help but show their bias.

I say go to a rental house and shoot a bit on each and see what you like best for your working style. but to be honest this whole thread seems like yet another case of people not wanting to give accurate helpful information but rather their opinion of how things are but present it as fact rather then as their opinion. It's going to be very hard to share and learn on here when everyone acts like this, oh the wonder of the human spirit.

have a good day! and I hope you can sift through the FUD to find the info you asked for but that would be difficult.
 
Danielvilliers said:
One thing we don't know until now is the price of the Epic-lite. the prices of red have been creeping up every time so to speculate, more so with a company with red track record is nor very serious. In six month they might change it, scrap it etc...

The second thing I don't understand is the the concept that someone's film is obsolete because it is not shot in 4k. I would like to know how many people think that their film will even be relevant to an audience in 5 years. I take the example of Avatar, the biggest film in terms of money (I had to go three time at the cinema to be able to watch it). It has been airing on satelite tv the last 2 month, I have watch it once and watch some part of it when I fell on it when changing channel and now I zap it as soon as I see it. In two years it will be on national TV and so what!!! Do you think I will want to watch it again or the latest greatest film of 2013!!! Guess what, most film are obsolete after 2 years, 4k/3d or not.
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obsolete as in when standards of beyond high definition are a common every day, thing, the stuff shot in 1080p won't be up to snuff. Like your favorite tv shows never making it to blu ray because they were shot on SD cameras. Film was future proofed from the get go, and can be rescanned for 4k distribution. Even if it takes 20 years for 4k to be everywhere, that stuff is still future proofed and to be watched from here to the end. Does it mean people won't watch good old dvds anymore? maybe, maybe not, do people watch VHS anymore?

so whenever 4k is the everyday thing, avatar won't scale up well at all. the only thing that won't be soft and pixelated will probably be the CGI, since they develop cgi at several times larger resolution to remove aliasing.

it's not to be inflammatory, it's just the philosophy of their company. They wanted to match film, and they started with resolution first and foremost. You develop r3d just like you develop film. In retrospect, shooting on RED is similar if you were shooting on 35 on everything. Does 35 fit into everything you do? No, and that's where the problem lies. People forget what they are shooting on.

and one can argue with s16 too, but that's limited to about 1080p of resolution, that technically won't be future proofed either.
At this very moment, RED is the highest resolution digital cinema camera. The only one I can think of that exists that matches resolution is the phantom 65.

no you don't need 4k for everything, no 1080p won't scale well to 4k when it comes to that. It's a battle we all pick and choose. RED isn't wrong for making the decision to do everything they can to be the replacement for 35, it's really on the other end, where it meets producers, clients, and end users that don't educate themselves enough that think they can bring a canon to a pistol shoot and expect everything to be ok.
 
HD will still look like HD on a 4K screen though (in the home). HD was a quantem leap from SD, for the average joe.... HD to 4K will not be.

I can't see it getting much further than 3D in the home... a niche market. At least until is is pretty much free to change.... my mum and dad are my benchmark and they will be happy with HD for the rest of their lives, i'm certain.

Anyway, that's all a bit off topic... RED, F3... both great tools. As someone mentioned... if you are gonna buy, rent both out first. See what ticks your boxes.
 
The "future proofing" is only relevant when youre shooting a feature, or television series. Things that have syndication a part of the business plan.

Corporate video, interviews, low budget commercials, the meat and potatoes of what a contemporary DP shoots to make a living, There is no future proofing necessary. No one will care about the newest way to apply hair relaxer in 5 years. When starting a business i need to cater to what the jobs i do need. When its just me and a camera, its the F3 and my Cooke Zoom. When its a feature, Big Music Video, Short film, High End commercial, etc I take my Cooke Primes, Rent an Epic, get my pay check, and move on.
 
S. Matthews said:
Shoot both yourself, and ask about F3 quality and settings here, and ask about red and settings and how to shot on REDuser, you will get much more accurate answers and far less people who have agendas to spread poking at other camera's or whatever. it's obvious people can't help but show their bias.
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Says the guy who got the dvinfo topic locked.

And FWIW, although I own 2 AF-100s, I have also shot 3 RED Projects, 2 5d commercials in the past month, and am working on something else on an Alexa gig.

Cameras are just tools.
 
mcgeedigital said:
And FWIW, although I own 2 AF-100s, I have also shot 3 RED Projects, 2 5d commercials in the past month, and am working on something else on an Alexa gig.

Cameras are just tools.
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Exactly my point, Just use what you need to get the job done efficiently.

I bought a F3, but i bought it because i plan to make it available to the people who need it for their projects. Not Every projects demands it. I have a 5D for the ones that dont, and i have aces to 3 epics, and 10 RED1's.
 
It's was not bias that caused me to reply to that it was the locking of threads and forum shut downs (unrelated to this site so..) that had me wondering, but I now understand why it was done, and agree with the reasons.(*edited)

(sorry for the previous non helpful ad hominem it was not necessary)

have a nice day and all the best to all of you!
 
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Harry Lime said:
Content is more important than tech specs. Good films do not become obsolete.
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+1...After the initial DVD/Bluray release period, I do agree with Danielvilliers that people get burnt out a bit on them. But - years later, the truly good/great movies can be watched again and again.
There are some movies that I'll watch every time I stumble upon them while channel surfing and most of those are at least 10 years old.
 
Harry Lime said:
Content is more important than tech specs. Good films do not become obsolete.
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That is part of what I meant that shooting 4k won't necessarily make your film obsolete or not. Classic stays classic, but I mean in reality for 99% of us, who are we to believe that our film will go theatrical, then blue ray, red ray, green ray, nano ray in the next 50 years, have a remastered version that will go on big screen again... I would like someday to be the next Lucas but I have to be a bit realistic.
 
tom.wong said:
obsolete as in when standards of beyond high definition are a common every day, thing, the stuff shot in 1080p won't be up to snuff. Like your favorite tv shows never making it to blu ray because they were shot on SD cameras. Film was future proofed from the get go, and can be rescanned for 4k distribution. Even if it takes 20 years for 4k to be everywhere, that stuff is still future proofed and to be watched from here to the end. Does it mean people won't watch good old dvds anymore? maybe, maybe not, do people watch VHS anymore?

so whenever 4k is the everyday thing, avatar won't scale up well at all. the only thing that won't be soft and pixelated will probably be the CGI, since they develop cgi at several times larger resolution to remove aliasing.

it's not to be inflammatory, it's just the philosophy of their company. They wanted to match film, and they started with resolution first and foremost. You develop r3d just like you develop film. In retrospect, shooting on RED is similar if you were shooting on 35 on everything. Does 35 fit into everything you do? No, and that's where the problem lies. People forget what they are shooting on.

and one can argue with s16 too, but that's limited to about 1080p of resolution, that technically won't be future proofed either.
At this very moment, RED is the highest resolution digital cinema camera. The only one I can think of that exists that matches resolution is the phantom 65.

no you don't need 4k for everything, no 1080p won't scale well to 4k when it comes to that. It's a battle we all pick and choose. RED isn't wrong for making the decision to do everything they can to be the replacement for 35, it's really on the other end, where it meets producers, clients, and end users that don't educate themselves enough that think they can bring a canon to a pistol shoot and expect everything to be ok.
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One thing you forgot completely is the human factor and that is the part that all the techno jumbo talk misses the point completely. We are human beings with a set of capabilities and physical restriction. If in 50 years we human being have developed some set of zoom into our eyes like eagles then your point will be valid. But fortunately or unfortunately we can see a certain wavelength of light and set of resolution (less so when it is in motion). So there are threshold, SD was far from that, but HD is near of what the human being can differentiate in motion. When you reach this level it becomes... good enough, even if you double, triple the resolution etc. it won't bring that much of an improvement because in the end the limiting factor is human beings.

Take the example of Avatar, I went to see that in one of the biggest theater in France, and not one second was I disturbed by the ... 2K version of it. Do you think that in the next 10 years cinema screen will have double in size or everyone will have 40 foot screen at home!!! On the contrary, I do photography as a living with lot of portrait. One thing I do is diffuse to get some softer skin tone. Everytime I see online people sharpening portrait photography it just scream amateur (except if you do black and white of elderly people in reportage style). I would loose all my clients if they could count every pores and defect of there skin in there photo. 4k can be good for some scenery but won't work well for human being.
 
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well honestly, that is a debate that probably won't end. I'm not advocating either side, i see the merits in it all, i love the f3, I love red. as well as f35, alexa, etc. etc. in some cases i still love the look of the 5d, and I love the look of 65 mm and IMAX. the choices are there to be made. I'm just stating, this is what RED does, that's their philosophy and what they truly believe.

being able to see the difference is subjective. Personally I have never had the pleasure of seeing a 4k projection or comparing a 4k panel to a 1080p panel. Maybe sometime this year when Sony comes out with them. But from what I hear, a 4k projection makes a huge difference. Not my opinion, just from what I've been told with what others have experienced. So if it adds a new level to the theater experience, I'm all for it.

To be able to soften skin from a very sharp image is much easier to do than to sharpen skin that's been shot soft. It's done all the time, and probably will continue to be done so. Watching even a hollywood film shot on 35, I can see the amount of post softening filters used on the skin to make them look more pleasing. It is what is, and again, the major issue is, people not understanding what they are getting into when shooting RED or anything like it. If they know what they are doing and what they are going to do with it, there should be no issues. RED makes a fine 1080p too, with rocket transcoding, it's speedy as all hell. no different from transcoding back in the p2 days.

but the screwed pooch is people just jumping on what they deem the hottest camera and screwing themselves, and screaming that it's the camera's fault. It's like shooting on 35 and complaining how long and costly it is to do the processing.

Whether you believe in the 4k future or not is really of no consequence. everybody will shoot on what they want, and that's great, and that's how it's always gonna be. when diving back into topic, why f3 over RED? we can turn it right back to, cause RED can be overkill, and costs of it are under estimated quite often when you factor in production to post. plain and simple.

btw a full tricked out r1 to standards that people are used to using on RED goes somewhere between 30-40k without lenses, in owning. about 35k ish roughly if u just want the thing to turn on and shoot.

and f3 can turn on and shoot for about 15k ish. rounding up. cost vs benefits. the forever battle.
 
Danielvilliers said:
One thing you forgot completely is the human factor and that is the part that all the techno jumbo talk misses the point completely. We are human beings with a set of capabilities and physical restriction. If in 50 years we human being have developed some set of zoom into our eyes like eagles then your point will be valid. But fortunately or unfortunately we can see a certain wavelength of light and set of resolution (less so when it is in motion). So there are threshold, SD was far from that, but HD is near of that what the human being can differentiate in motion. When you reach this level it becomes... good enough, that even if you double, triple etc. it won't bring that much of an improvement because in the end the limiting factor is human beings.

Take the example of Avatar, I went to see that in one of the biggest theater in France, and not one second was I disturbed by the ... 2K version of it. Do you think that in the next 10 years cinema screen will have double in size or everyone will have 40 foot screen at home!!! On the contrary, I do photography as a living with lot of portrait. One thing I do is diffuse to get some softer skin tone. Everytime I see online people sharpening portrait photography it just scream amateur (except if you do black and white of elderly people in reportage style). I would loose all my clients if they could count every pores and defect of there skin in there photo. 4k can be good for some scenery but won't work well for human being.
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I agree totally with this - in fact more and more I think what's changing faster than anything, is the way in which content is/will be viewed. This has a direct effect on the quality that will be needed in the future (for certain applications of course...not full on theatrical release, or festival viewing) One only needs to look at the music industry for proof- Artists/Producers spend all that studio time, using the highest quality mics, pres, and consoles available - just to be downloaded in a format of lesser quality than CDs.
Yes, the initial signal capture does matter...but a lot of that is thrown away by the time it's delivered to the consumer - most are none the wiser. I suspect this is becoming more true with films as well - many people skip theatres and bluray completely and just download from Netflix, etc.
 
Cinesin said:
4K = marketing novelty, plain and simple.
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If you mean insofar as people buying a camera just because it says "4K" (or "FullHD" or anything else for that matter) on the side...true.

If you really think there's no use for more than 1920x1080 pixels...false.
 
hunter richards said:
Pee-wee Herman's Big Adventure? ; )
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Ha!.... I was actually thinking more like Fargo, Goodfellas, Shawshank Redemtion (I've seen this one WAY too many times....and I don't quite know why. I wouldn't list it as one of my top 10, but it's still pretty damn good.) I also do the same thing wtih Groundhog's Day...every freaking time it's on!

Anyway...back to the cameras. (sorry)
 
I find it interesting that people are saying you can get a more organic look from the F3 Than the Red MX...

I'd have to disagree completely.

Yes, you can do a lot with color correction - but many times I can recognize sony footage at the pixel level. I know that sounds weird - but if you practice looking you will see what I mean.

Same with the Canon DSLR look - The colors 9 times out of 10 are FXXXXed.
 
One more thing - there are so many broke-Azz Red Owner Operators out there on craigslist that you can find a (crappy) package for like $400/day with lenses.

Not that I condone that... I think it's asinine.

But in conclusion - I actually think the F3 is a really cool camera. The more choices I have of camera with high quality Imager at an affordable price the better.
 
I have shot with plenty of different cameras including F900/950, Alexa and RedMX and I will take the RED anytime I can. shooting 4K allows you the flexibility of doing re-framing when needed. The higher frame rates comes in quite handy but most important is the fact that it shoots RAW....guys, trust me when I tell you that once you start grading RAW files (where you have so much control over the image), it makes you not want to grade any other formats. And I don't know what all the rumble is about post production....Unless you are still using the old and backward Final cut pro (IT REALLY NEEDS AN UPDATE!!!), every other major NLE support native Red format. With Todays fast cpu/Gpu combo it's really no longer a hassle to edit RED files. We do it all the time! Having said that, the F3 is still a nice camera by all means. I am just spoiled after having shot on RED so many times.... ;)....and let's not talk about the EPIC.....(in a class by itself!)
 
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