Best cinema camera for me?

[Emanuel]

6 hours ago, BenEricson said:

If you're coming from the F3, any of them will disappoint you. You can shoot clean at 1600 ISO on the F3. The noise is filmy too. 

I'm not sure what type of lowlight performance you are looking for/expecting. The C300ii will be better than the F3, which is already very good. The URSA will be worse.

 

Sure, as much as a billionaire will miss anything if only millionaire... : D I recall when people were used to shoot on film, besides the fact I concur noise can look very filmic too, Blackmagic noise @ low light included.

[IronFilm]

10 hours ago, Emanuel said:

David, nice scope you have on topic. I thought that had been written by me (except the fact you left the REDs outside), can you imagine? My finest vote would end on Blackmagics anyway. They fully deserve it!

@IronFilm

RED? What is that?

These cameras can film ALL colors! Not just red ;-)

[maxotics]

8 hours ago, Emanuel said:

Blackmagic noise @ low light included

I sympathize with your comments.  I don't shoot enough with high end cameras to speak from experience.  From my analysis, however, I believe that the "don't-shoot-well in low light" reputation of BM cameras is a distortion.  All 8-bit video requires a fair bit of noise-reduction.  Add to that the chroma softening inherent in 422 or 420 video compression, and you're going to end up with an image that is going to look fairly similar from good light and down.  So on an FS5, for example, you won't see much of a color difference between low light and good light, only a difference in noise.

With the BM cameras, (or any RAW camera) the god light image is going to look significantly more detailed than the FS5 image.  On this I have tested over and over again.  I can see the difference between RAW source and compressed.  Not a difference most people would recognize, but if you work with video you can see it.  So when you look at low-light RAW on a BM and low-light on the FS5, the FS5 will look more quickly usable, but I'm not sure if it would look that different from the BM if the BM was built to process 8-bit NOISE REDUCTION video.  Or, if the FS5 did shoot RAW natively, not sure it wouldn't get a bad reputation too.

Put another way, the kind of detail a BM camera records in RAW is something one wants to maintain, but is impossible in low light.  It feels a negative of the camera, but it's really a matter of EXPECTATIONS LEAD TO RESENTMENT

 

[Asmundma]

 

Here you will find a comparison. If you want good AF there is one choice. 

[rokkimort]

Thank you for all the replies.

I'm definitely not going to get ursa mini pro. I owned a bunch of BMD products and we're not getting along good. I was getting FPN at ISO800 when shooting dark-ish moody scenes, and that's a no go for me anymore.

Sonys are strange, the F3 has tons of quirks, but for the price the image is superb. On the other hand the quirks seem to transition to newer models as well. I've downloaded some FS7 footage shot at native ISO, and tried grading it, it has same limits as the F3, but colors are worse in my opinion (weird orange-red tones, super unnatural, though I didn't see those objects in real life), and the noise is fairly obvious, though not as "filmic" as F3.

I've heard Varicam is hot these days and EVA is it's young young sister, but the footage I've seen from it looks more like video then film as well. If anyone has nice cinematic references shot on EVA1 please feel free to share.

I seem to like C300 MKII but the price bites a tad, and it's got no ProRes.

[IronFilm]

13 minutes ago, rokkimort said:

 

I'm definitely not going to get ursa mini pro. I owned a bunch of BMD products and we're not getting along good. I was getting FPN at ISO800 when shooting dark-ish moody scenes, and that's a no go for me anymore

 

Which ones specifically? No point comparing say a BMPC4K and an URSA Mini Pro in such matters.

 

 

15 minutes ago, rokkimort said:

 

I've heard Varicam is hot these days and EVA is it's young young sister, but the footage I've seen from it looks more like video then film as well.

Do remember how "filmic" or not something is often comes down to the shooter not the tool.

 

 

16 minutes ago, rokkimort said:

've downloaded some FS7 footage shot at native ISO, and tried grading it, it has same limits as the F3, but colors are worse in my opinion (weird orange-red tones, super unnatural, though I didn't see those objects in real life)

 

Check out the results from the FS7 over on dvxuser with their colors