Sony 4K 35mm PMW-F5 and F55

SD cameras sucked for multiple reasons. At first they were inerlaced only. Then, when 24p became available, it was recorded with pulldown. Most cameras recorded in 4:3. Those that recorded widescreen had native 4:3 sensors, so resolution in widescreen dropped even further. Older sensors were noisy, they would easily blow up highlights and give up in low light.

What we have now is a completely different world. We have almost film-like latitude even on cheap camcorders, we have progressive recording from 24p to 60p and beyond, we have widescreen, we have efficient codecs.

4K compared to 1080p is an evolutionary development. It does not change much in the look, only adds more pixels. It will be quickly accepted for hi-end productions, but everyone else will remain happy with 1080p for quite some time. 1080p is more than enough for 50-inch TVs and for YouTube.

But I am glad that Sony has finally joined high quality AVC bandwagon. I think that 4:2:2 and 10-bit color encoding is more important than 4K. I hope that time has come for AVC Long-G to trickle down to consumer camcorders.

4K shooting + Global CMOS chip + 240 frames per second in 2K = Time for me to finally hit the jackpot since theirs no way I'd be able to afford the F55 currently. Still wondering what kind of price tag it'll have.

1080p is dead ? Is that a joke ? Do you have a 4K HDTV and PC/Mac with 4K monitor ? Does it have a full frame sensor like the VG900 ?

My take is that the standard, calibrated eyeball saw a big difference between SD and current HD. Will the eyeball, at normal viewing distance, see a difference between current 1080p and 4k? What I've read says no.

Bill

4K is big deal for more than just seeing a difference between 4k and 1080p. At a normal viewing distance with wide detailed shots the difference should be noticeable. However, the big difference for filmmakers such as myself is improved chroma keying, especially with hair and the ability to shoot wider handheld, post crop and be able to effectively use the wonderful Adobe After Effects Warp Stabilizer steadicam plugin, which makes it look as if handheld shots were shot with a very nice steadicam or dolly system. You can do this with 1080p, but the reduction in resolution will be more apparent than starting with a 4k image. Also, it's good for the the ability to reframe or even add post camera slides and such....while still retaining great resolution.

The Sony looks to be a phenomenal camera. No wonder Red just halfed the price of their Epic, dropped the price of their Scarlet-X and are selling battle tested Red One with MX Sensor (ie; same sensor in the Epic and Scarlet) for $4,000.

That warp stabilizer is actually in Premiere Pro CS6. It was only in After Effects in CS5.5

Not loosing detail using the warp stabilizer when the exported setting is 1080p and being able to crop around the image is a very big deal. This can do a lot for music videos. Start out Wide and then immediately go closer. Or maybe you see later that something was in the shot, you'd be able to zoom in without loosing detail.

When you add the accessories that's required to shoot with an Epic, the percentage of the cut is not that large but it's true that they are feeling a little pressured with this huge Sony announcement and had no choice but to make drastic cuts even though they knew not everybody will like that especially people who paid full price very recently. This is probably why Sony didn't announce the pricing yet. They are fully aware what Red just did to and are probably going to release the F5 and F55 for slightly less than they planned. It's also true that Sony is trying to fix their financial problem at the same time. It's definitely nice to see a pricing war going on right now.
Edited by Paulo Teixeira - 11/4/12 at 1:36pm

Firstly, very few video cameras that produce video in 1080p format have a measured resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. The loss in resolution is typically due to a Bayer color filter on a single sensor, or low quality 4:2:0 compression (eg., AVCHD). Recording 4k content and then down-scaling to 1080p will typically result in a higher quality image even on a 1920x1080 monitor.

Secondly, you don't need a 4k monitor to enjoy 4k content. You just need a monitor that has more resolution than 1920x1080. Many people have such monitors, for example, 30" monitors with 2560x1600 resolution. Even the ipad and the google nexus 10 have displays with more more than 1920x1080 pixels!
Edited by hatchback - 11/4/12 at 10:43pm

Speaking of high resolution monitors, the one on the 15" MacBook Pro is 2880x1800. The 13" version is 2560x1600.

As a perspective, the regular consumer 4K TV's will be 3840x2160.

Full frame is pointless ? Is that another one of your jokes ? Go on Vimeo and tell Vincent Laforet and Philip Bloom that full frame is pointless. Anyone who pays big bucks for a 4K camera so they could wait years until 4K HDTVs and monitors drop to 1080p price levels is a fool in my book. So when are YOU buying a 4K camera or are YOU just a dreamer ?


Edited by jogiba - 11/5/12 at 6:09am

I've seen people put this link in many places but I'll be posting it here for people who haven't seen it yet.
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?88303-4K-Delivery-get-ready

My VG900 with 85mm F1.4 :

I sure love the look of those Rokinon/Samyang lenses. I plan to get the Cine versions with the declicked aperture.

I plan on getting the 24mm F1.4 and 35mm F1.4 Rokinon Cine versions. On the VG900 my 20mm Pentax lens has a super wide 84° FOV vs only 60.4° FOV on the top of the line Sony F65.

The 24mm F1.4 is another one I want. I heard they may do a 10mm lens. I'm hoping it will be at least F2.8 and that they'll do a Cine version. At the moment I'm planning on the Black Magic Cinema Camera so I can shoot and edit RAW. I've already played around with some RAW DNGs and the editing power of 2.5k 12-Bit RAW with 13+ stops of dynamic range is simply amazing, Of course I'm also considering the Nikon D800 which is being used to shoot scenes on Dexter and the A camera for Showtime's Wilfred....as well as the Panasonic GH3. Right now my full frame camera would have to be the Nikon D800 or D600. Probably the D800 simply because it has good dynamic range and has the anti moire/aliasing filter available.

Would sure love to have a Sony F5, but I bet the recorder alone will cost more than the Black Magic Cinema Camera itself. The Red One MX for $4,000 is enticing, but will end up at around $8,000 ready to shoot. Still not too bad considering what it used to cost.

I ended up getting the regular 35mm F1.4 Bower full frame wide angle Sony A mount since I plan on using it with my Steadicam Merlin and will pre-set the focus with it.



http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/show-highend/resource.solutions.bbsccms-assets-show-highend-F65.shtml
Edited by jogiba - 11/17/12 at 5:08pm

So it seams that Red is trying to sue Sony over the F5, F55 and F65 over Patent Infringement.
http://news.priorsmart.com/redcom-v-sony-corporation-of-america-l7D8/

I'm still a little speechless over this news but who knows how all this will play out. I'll try to be neutral.

And look what is coming from China :
http://www.kineraw.com/index.asp

If you sit close enough Bill, you can see the difference. I've seen the 84" Sony 4K display and when you're close, the resolution & detail are just stunning. I've even plugged my 2K Sony NEX-VG30 in to the display to see how it looked upconverted at normal distances. In a word 'fabulous'.

Yes, you do need to sit closer to see the difference, but it's pretty significant when you do.

With that said, here's what I don't get from one of the links that Chevypower provided above:

"Users can connect directly to Sony's new 84-inch BRAVIA 4K (3840x2160) LED TV for largescreen monitoring of the camera's 4K 60P images (at resized horizontal resolution of 3860 pixels)."

I'm not sure how this is possible when the new 4K Sony displays do not accept 4K at 60p. In their published specs, they only go out to 4K @30p. Add to that the fact that they have HDMI 1.4 inputs and there is no way to get 4K @60p through these current HDMI connections.

I'm 67. I got to see B&W when it was brand new and there was one channel. My Dad sold Zenith TVs in his hardware store. I got to watch the development all the way through to 1080p for my TV's and cameras. And, for me, it is impressive to see and even make video that clear.

If 4K is coming, my bet is it could take 10 years to get to the point of being "universal" . DirecTV put themselves into 20 or 30 million homes on the back of 1080 HD TV. They are still adding HD channels and SD has not gone away.

When 4K makes it to my living room I may be sitting close to the TV just to see it!

In reality 4K will probably not be an important standard for me, no matter how good it is.

Bill

It depends on your distribution channel.

For web or TV distribution (or even festivals), 4K is not a very good investment over 1080p. As Bill says, the screens aren't there and most people won't be able to see the difference.

For example, here is a short "film", Kickstart Theft shot in 4K by Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC on the Sony F65:


And here is a short "film", Clash, shot by Tim Manders on the GH3:


On the web, the $1300 camera is close enough to the $65,000 camera to make spending the extra $63,700 problematic.

That said, for theatrical distribution, if the choice is 4K digital or 35mm film, 4K digital makes a whole lot of sense.

Bill B.

That's a ridiculous claim. The 4k "Kickstart Theft" video was uploaded to vimeo as a 720p video. Of course it doesn't look better than any other video uploaded in 720p.

Read Bill's post again. His point is that if videos are distributed by uploading to Vimeo, it won't make a difference, if shown without additional processing by a 4K projector on a giant screen, it will make a difference. What's the "ridculous claim"?

"That's a ridiculous claim. The 4k "Kickstart Theft" video was uploaded to vimeo as a 720p video. Of course it doesn't look better than any other video uploaded in 720p."

OK?

Exactly, Mark.

Hatchback, all I'm suggesting is that, if the distribution channel is limited to 720p or 1080p (e.g., Vimeo or YouTube); even 2K recording might be overkill.

Bill
Edited by brunerww - 2/14/13 at 8:26pm

The distribution channel isn't limited to 720p or even 1080p. You can upload a 4k video to vimeo, and anyone can download it exactly as-is in all its 4k glory. Of course anyone who streams it from vimeo will get 720p, but the 4k download option is still there. And anyone can upload a 4k video to youtube, and anyone can stream that video in 4k directly from youtube. So the distribution channel most definitely supports 4k.

"anyone can stream that video in 4k directly from youtube"

At what bitrate? I can hardly stream 1080p videos using Youtube smoothly, and they are highly compressed and look awful at full screen (1080) compared to the 1080p original. Unless you have incredible bandwidth, the video wil be severely degraded by streaming. What bitrate is used by Youtube to stream 4K videos?