F65: Why the F65 is better than the F35

[MeesePiece]

Well said Mitch.
I remember reading that when they went to shoot "Better Call Saul" - the spinoff of Breaking Bad, they did a test with kodak 5219 vs red dragon - and they couldn't tell the difference.
And watching nightcrawler on a 32' hdtv thru netflix, I think the night scenes shot on alexa cut perfectly with the daytime stuff shot on 35mm.

For me, I wish I could shoot a roll of 35mm and red and the sony f65 - using grain, coloring, etc - and see how it feels.

Does the grain added in post help with the randomness and the resolving power - to bring digital back to film-like?

I use gorilla grain but wondering if others have a grain type they like?

 

[Grug]

In terms of DR, I agree with JMtheDP that film has been surpassed here. They attempted to shoot Revenant with film in natural light but characters went silhouette in the backlit forests, which is what led to the Alexa approach.

I'd counter that film's DR has been equalled, but the distribution of it is very different. Digital sees miles into the shadows, film does not. Being able to underexpose a subject (in order to hold the sky) and then bring it up in post, is one of the nicest strengths of digital. But if we can squeeze an extra couple of stops of highlights without sacrificing that shadow detail, that's when we'll finally surpass film.

I shot my first exposure tests with the F35 yesterday, and it was enlightening to see its highlight-biased distribution of latitude in action. Going two stops under is fine for when you want a subject in darkness, but there is little chance of coming back from being three stops under, and almost nothing to see at four stops under.

I haven't had to deal with these sorts of restrictions with underexposure in a while, so it will be interesting seeing how we go on location, because I know I can go two stops under to hold a sky, but three is going to leave very little detail in a face.

 

[Mitch Gross]

Thanks for that Mitch. Taking all that into account, what are your feelings on 4k (and beyond)?

My feeling is that it is academic. Film is going the way of the dodo bird and that's all there is to it. So we now have what we have and we must move forward.

Frankly, I can't wait until we get past all this resolution nonsense. Remember when all the computer manufacturers used to tout the megahertz their processors ran at? Now they're all so damn fast that no one really cares unless you're a gamer or processing heavy graphics or the like. It just doesn't matter.

4K isn't really there yet. Ata certain point it will become like a Phase 1 back -- so much that it just doesn't matter anymore.

Frankly what I'm waiting for is when we get beyond the grid of sensors and into open structure again. I'm looking forward to what's only theoretical right now -- rasterizing. That's where there's no grid at all and an electron beam simply scans across a surface wherever it needs to go, the way an old fashioned oscilloscope worked. Infinite resolution. Hope I see that one in my lifetime.

 

[trafficn]

Whoa, Mitch. Now how do I compress your doctrine of salvation into a bite-size philosophy that battles uneducated clients and producers asking "do you shoot 4K" like "do I know Kung Fu" ??

 

[ajhill]

There is a difference between high resolving power and sharpness. Film has high resolving power without overt sharpness, which is not the case in digital. This is why increased filtration is often desired in digital. Much of this is due to the random changing nature of film imaging structure compared to the rigid grid of an imaging sensor, and some is due to the physical layered depth of a piece of film emulsion compared to the singular surface of silicate on an electronic sensor. They are inherently different.

Aaton showed a prototype of the ill-fated Penelope Delta camera a few years back that actually randomly moved the sensor in two axis (Hence the name Delta) in a effort to simulate film grain. You F35 guys would have loved it 3.5K CCD image sensor (4 years ago). Turned out to be a little more difficult to make that they must have originally thought. They sure did pack a ton of people into Abel that night though...

The mistake Aaton made was not having some young, scantily-clad woman standing next to the camera. The indy film crowd would have loved the vibe of both the camera and spokesman...

http://nofilmschool.com/2012/10/aatons-penelope-delta-camera

Alan

 

[MeesePiece]

Wow that camera seemed amazing. Did it die because of the cost or probably hard to source the CCD technology?

Thanks for sharing that.

 

[DLD]

Wow that camera seemed amazing. Did it die because of the cost or probably hard to source the CCD technology?...

Probably the cost of producing a mid-tier camera in Europe. Had they gone to China ... who knows. From the investors perspective, the window to capture a necessary portion of the market is very narrow. Red was/is well financed and it hit the high end of the market where the dominant players were slower to move and the margins were a lot greater. AJA Cion looked good on paper but had some sensor problems and had to be closed out at about a 50% discount. BMD's problems are well documented. Kinefinity never really took off either. At least, Panasonic can absorb the R&D of Varicam 35. The independents can't.

 

[trafficn]

The form factor of that Aaton, and most of them in general- are so delightfully weird. https://youtu.be/QYr2AcyVO0w?t=45s

That Delta project's concept reminds my somewhat of the old 35mm DOF adapters with a spinning ground glass which added a specific texture and variation.

I am still trying to process what Mitch said about raster video. *goes back to pixel peeping like prehistoric man etching cattle to cave walls*

 

[Harry Lime]

Hypothetically, ARRI is there with Alexa but Lubezki said, "Not yet". I figure he has some cred in that department. On the other hand, with the processing power, memory and sensors moving up in class since the current generation of cameras have been around - which is around four years for Sony F5/55/65 line, five-six years for Alexa, with only Red updating more often - anything that may come out in 2016 would have a higher DR than film. I believe Red Weapon's early test shots that Phil Holland did were getting as high as 18.

http://www.newsshooter.com/2016/01/...ted-by-the-australian-cinematography-society/

The Aussies are getting a little less than 14 stops out of the WEAPON.

 

[MeesePiece]

red has come a long way I think - and I think a lot of feature films are using them more and more in force to the alexa. The image I feel has more bite to it, natural perceived sharpness. And then there is the poor, forgotten F65, which I'd love to see in a shoot out with the red dragon in terms of color, motion, etc.

The feature I'm shooting with it on is really impressing me, not just in daylight lighting but also tungsten, and also the noise floor is very low. I'm pulling clean-enough images out of 1600 asa shooting - and the grain feels incredibly film-like.

Now if only Sony can do like Panasonic, and shrink and make lighter the f65 like they shrunk the varicam. Assume it's possible if they lose the mechanical shutter and get a smaller (or internal) recorder. I'm sure they are working on it. I guess the F55 was their attempt at that, but a lot got compromised in the quality of the image.

 

[Harry Lime]

Aaton showed a prototype of the ill-fated Penelope Delta camera a few years back that actually randomly moved the sensor in two axis (Hence the name Delta) in a effort to simulate film grain. You F35 guys would have loved it 3.5K CCD image sensor (4 years ago). Turned out to be a little more difficult to make that they must have originally thought. They sure did pack a ton of people into Abel that night though...

The mistake Aaton made was not having some young, scantily-clad woman standing next to the camera. The indy film crowd would have loved the vibe of both the camera and spokesman...

http://nofilmschool.com/2012/10/aatons-penelope-delta-camera

Alan

Apparently DALSA had problems getting the CDD into 'mass production'.

Which is a real shame, because that camera had some pretty amazing innovations like the perforated shutter that acted as an ND, the shifting CCD etc.

 

[Harry Lime]

The "soften the look for faces" canard has been around for years. When the broadcasts were still in analog, many directors were smearing Vaseline over the lenses that showed the closeups of the stars of the show and that was when a regular TV was still in SD.

It's hardly a canard. Not by a long shot. Modern glass on a 4k camera is brutally sharp and even more so in RAW. Even uncompressed HD can show things in a closeup that no one wants to see.

I know of at least one feature where the use of the RED was vetoed by the leading man. This actors is still considered to be quite handsome despite his advancing age, but has some scaring on his face from skin problems he had in his youth and you saw all of that on the RED. So, out it went.

Over at Tiffen they are doing brisk sales in the diffusion filter department and prices on vintage glass has sky rocketed in recent years. 10 years ago people were using Super Baltars as paperweights, now a set of six is going for as much $80k. DoP like Rodney Charters are right on the money when they say that the manufacturers have gone completely overboard in the resolution race.

In other words, it's not a function of a camera to make a star feel more secure. And it's not a job of a camera operator either, unless his name is Freud.

Seriously? Believe me, if you shot any leading actor regardless of the camera being used and made them look bad your ass would be grassed.

 

[MikalZ]

My feeling is that it is academic. Film is going the way of the dodo bird and that's all there is to it. So we now have what we have and we must move forward.

Frankly, I can't wait until we get past all this resolution nonsense. Remember when all the computer manufacturers used to tout the megahertz their processors ran at? Now they're all so damn fast that no one really cares unless you're a gamer or processing heavy graphics or the like. It just doesn't matter.

4K isn't really there yet. Ata certain point it will become like a Phase 1 back -- so much that it just doesn't matter anymore.

Frankly what I'm waiting for is when we get beyond the grid of sensors and into open structure again. I'm looking forward to what's only theoretical right now -- rasterizing. That's where there's no grid at all and an electron beam simply scans across a surface wherever it needs to go, the way an old fashioned oscilloscope worked. Infinite resolution. Hope I see that one in my lifetime.

You went "big picture" Mitch, but interesting answer. An electron beam rasterizer sounds nice and organic, sign me up. There are also these quantum dots sensors on the horizon.

 

[Mitch Gross]

The Aaton Penelope Delta was a special creature and it holds a certain place in my heart. There were a number of particular innovations in it that were unique then and remain so today, and it was by far the most comfortable digital cinema camera I've ever put on my shoulder. I consulted with them on several occasions and there are several NAB videos and presentations of mine out there. Sorry I'm not a "young, scantily-clad woman" but I least I never showed up at trade shows in a smock with a schmata on my head like JP! Such a character.

There are several reasons the Delta never made it to market ad ultimately why Aaton went under (now brought back as a unit of TransVideo, making the high-end Cantar-X audio recorder). It's probably not for me to be the one to put the dirt out into the open, but suffice to say that the camera itself was not to blame.

 

[DLD]

http://www.newsshooter.com/2016/01/...ted-by-the-australian-cinematography-society/

The Aussies are getting a little less than 14 stops out of the WEAPON.

Red itself claims 16.5 but, let's say, the "search by a committee" is correct and it's "only" 14. This is still an s35 Weapon, with Vista Vision/FF still to come. That should gain that missing stop back and be around the film range.

Of course, multiple exposures at a higher frame rate could do even more.

.... It's hardly a canard. Not by a long shot. Modern glass on a 4k camera is brutally sharp and even more so in RAW. Even uncompressed HD can show things in a closeup that no one wants to see. ... Believe me, if you shot any leading actor regardless of the camera being used and made them look bad your ass would be grassed.

Like I said, actors and actresses were afraid of closeups since the cameras were invented. They were also against any lighting that would make them look less than perfect. Or make-up. Or hair. Or insufficiently high heels. Or too-tight-too-loose Spanx tights. In other words, EVERYTHING!

PS. A few nights ago, I stumbled onto a fairly decent quality stream of the "Intern" (2014). Early in the film, there's a scene where De Niro is accosted by Linda Lavin, a familiar to his character widow who essentially asks him on a date. Well, Linda Lavin is 78 - was ~ 76 then - and natural, i.e., void of extensive plastic surgery and, off their scene, she looked about twenty years older than Bob. This was a casting choice and a really bad one. (not that I have anything against Linda Lavin .. it's just that the clip didn't really flatter her visually and no camera would have done so)

 

[MeesePiece]

someone should buy the tech and just use a CMOS chip and call it a day. I love CCD's but I thought it is a true struggle to manufacture them - leading to why the Sony F35 cost 200k on its release.
Is too sharp a bad thing?
No, I rather have it be too sharp and use natural diffusion than being too soft and having to use digital sharpening. I also hate the look of jaggies around the edges of people - that to me looks digital, and hey there must be a reason beyond myself why the f35 went away from feature films from a dp and director perspective - ultimately those who make the calls on camera for major motion pictures. Not someone who can get distracted by marketing.

I am very happy with the tiffen digital diffusion 1/4, 1/2 and 1 over my lenses. And using older vintage lenses are nice.

 

[JMtheDP]

I tend to find my issues with lower-end cameras are the fact they want the resolution of the big boys but want to compress it into tiny datastreams. This to me is where the "video" look starts to creep in.

Diffusion for faces is nothing new - that's been around since the dawn of photography more or less.

 

[DLD]

I tend to find my issues with lower-end cameras are the fact they want the resolution of the big boys but want to compress it into tiny datastreams. This to me is where the "video" look starts to creep in...

I was just advocating the conceptual GH5 (rumors of a first rumor are still half a year away) that included an internal SSD, which would allow for a much higher bit rate without resorting to HEVC and its heat related problems. That said, during my "research" on the topic, I saw a clip from A7RII recorded onto (name withheld) external recorder in ProRes 422 HQ and the image on my old monitor was just fantastic. Stephen Mick (one of the mods here) also posted recently that a GH4 with an external recorder (ProRes?) looked amazing even on a large 4K pro monitor, essentially holding its own vs. Red that were using previously on the higher budget shoots. Granted, the versatility and the workflow still remains the milieu of the higher grade cameras and it will always be so ... but, dang it, GH4 + Shogun Assassin is ~ $2,200 + media combined.

 

[Harry Lime]

Red itself claims 16.5 but, let's say, the "search by a committee" is correct and it's "only" 14.

Well, early on they were also talking about 20 stops for Dragon...

This is still an s35 Weapon, with Vista Vision/FF still to come. That should gain that missing stop back and be around the film range.

I doubt it. It's probably just a bigger version of the sensor with the same pixel pitch.
Besides, RED only shoots compressed. It's 3:1 at a minimum so you're already discarding a lot of what the sensor was capable of capturing.
They really need to offer a true RAW option, not only a wavelet compressed pseudo RAW format.

Of course, multiple exposures at a higher frame rate could do even more.

Not worth the trouble of multiplying your data footprint and risking motion artifacts.

Like I said, actors and actresses were afraid of closeups since the cameras were invented. They were also against any lighting that would make them look less than perfect. Or make-up. Or hair. Or insufficiently high heels. Or too-tight-too-loose Spanx tights. In other words, EVERYTHING!

I don't see your point. Yes, some actors are very vain and insecure for real or imagined reasons. It's always been like that going all the way back to the earliest people putting on a show in a cave. The job of every person you listed is to make the talent look as good as it is appropriate for the role and if you do not fulfill that directive you will not be working on that show for long. I can guarantee you that there would be fireworks if you shot someone with any camera and made them look unattractive, unless it was called for in the script.

And to get back on topic in the opinion of many people a camera shooting at 4/6/8k makes that job a lot harder.

 

[Surf it Mike]

Resolution issues are nothing new for ageing actors. Once again people keep referring to film for skin tones and look. Filmies like seeing "smudged/fudged " skin tones ......essentially a legacy look. But once again a modern audience doesn't care or know the difference.......sigh.

21st century hi resolution cinema /TV has its own unique skin tone rendition/ looks which modern audiences appreciate and accept. This look is more naturalistic and truthful and IMO more realistic and if done right looks amazing ie last shot of "Revenant" blood vessels , skin splotches, skin imperfections and all ....magnificent. ( & yes it can also do glamourised hi end images ) We would never have seen that without digital.

Deakins said "film , its over " we all need to get over it .....understand the medium we work with in the 21st century and maximise its potential and stop referring to medium thats disappearing before our eyes.

PS. With greater resolution comes greater responsibility , using these new tools to maximise & create stunning stories & images , it's not the other way around , more resolution = less responsibility.