SONY FX3 new camera to be announced

[Rinad Amir]

My current set up, i use handle as well sometimes 

[Llaasseerr]

9 hours ago, deezid said:

It became faster with firmware 2.0. Check the S5 readings.

Still has the best usable dynamic range though only beaten by the RED Komodo in the sub $10,000 class. FX3 and A7s3 are quite weak in that regard.

Do you have the receipts?

[TomTheDP]

15 hours ago, Django said:

@TomTheDP Canon R6 uses 1DX3 sensor and hence has abysmal RS in 4K25p (30ms) switching to 4k60p halves the count down to 15ms though, so for fast action better to shoot in that mode on that camera. R5 has much better RS performance.

A7S3/FX3 are the FF mirrorless kings with a whopping low 8.7ms in 4K25p. This alone places them way ahead of the curve for fast movement shots.

FX3 is growing on me, seems like a superb camera for stealthy run & gun.

True although Panasonic is great in crop mode and 4K 60p. The latest Sony 4K 12mp sensor is obviously better but you have to pay for it and of course you lose 6k stills. You can always get the $6000 Sony A1. 

[TomTheDP]

12 hours ago, deezid said:

It became faster with firmware 2.0. Check the S5 readings.

Still has the best usable dynamic range though only beaten by the RED Komodo in the sub $10,000 class. FX3 and A7s3 are quite weak in that regard.

I wouldn’t call the Sony’s weak but the s1/s1h/s5 is definitely better. 

[Llaasseerr]

On 2/18/2021 at 2:11 AM, deezid said:

Another issue with Sony footage (at least lots of FX6 stuff I've seen lately) is that it's quite prone to some nasty gamut clipping in S-Gamut3.cine at least. It looks even worse than BMD footage with HR turned on. Thankfully NR doesn't seem to be a huge problem on the FX6 at last.

Is there some S-Gamut3 footage showing bright saturated lights available as well?
 

https://filmplusgear.com/sony-fx6-test-files-for-download/

Re: gamut clipping, I finally took a look at one of the shots on this guy's page. Here's a shot bought into ACES which of course has a larger gamut than sgamut3.cine, then it's remapped to display on a P3D65 monitor. I would say that the issue you're seeing is that on the web page there is no correct gamut transform from a wide gamut to something like rec709. However there is still some funkiness from the digital numbers in the top right corner. I'm not sure if that's a compression artifact, or possibly to do with chroma subsampling, or it could be something that is still out of gamut and requires something like the "Neon Suppression LMT" in Resolve. Or maybe the sensor is clipping - it looks like the red channel has hit the dynamic range limit. I have a feeling it all might have been okay if shot raw though.

EDIT: It seems that behind the scenes the OS color management or the web browser is transforming it so it should display correctly on a regular sRGB monitor. Hard to tell how this will look for you though!

[IronFilm]

On 2/27/2021 at 11:36 AM, Llaasseerr said:

But yeah, it is a major pain that this camera has no TC in. Using the Atomos as a workaround is nowhere near as easy. I actually only just realised you can't jam sync with the AtomX Sync module, I thought it had a TC-in. It seems it can only be used as a master and then send a signal over Bluetooth. Way too many things could go wrong on a set.

Good lord no!!! 😮 
Make it be the slave, not the master. 

  

On 2/28/2021 at 10:54 AM, A_Urquhart said:

Unless you work professionally in the industry, it's hard to get excited about this camera as the tech specs are similar to the A7SIII.

Features that make your job easier and a camera easier to work with/ more reliable are overlooked by most people.

Internal Fan: woohoo what a boring feature for most people but this makes the camera a far more reliable tool professionally.

XLR inputs: Not sure how this isn't seen as a huge plus over the A7SIII.

Tally lamps: again for most here its not a selling point but professionally very welcome.

I would pay the price difference for theses features every day of the week. At the same time, I wish it had internal ND and TC support.

So true. 

[SteveV4D]

Slavery is an odd word to be used in this context.  To be a slave, you have to be owned by someone and subject to their orders; working with no reward or remuneration.  Hardly appropriate description to the wearing of masks and other Covid related restictions.  Rules don't equate to slavery, or else all would apply.  Do speed restrictions count as slavery, laws regarding stealing and murder an infringement on your human rights.  We all have to obey rules for the greater good of the country and a few more is hardly a huge step on our personal rights as a free person.  

Those who feel repressed by it, should remind themselves that it can be a lot worse.  There are Countries for example that regulate media, where you can be arrested for just disagreeing with the Government.  A perspective on things can help to respect what can be necessary steps to keep the population safe.

That said, I've not always been in agreement in how these protections have been implemented.  There is a cost to restrictions, a damage to mental health and the economy and even education, which is not always being fully considered in this pandemic.  In the UK, new rules are implemented with very little debate; giving the Government a power that I hope they don't get too comfortable with.  

The obsession to beat the virus at all costs is okay by those whose livelihoods and business havn't been deeply affected by this.  To them a few more months of lockdown is quite acceptable.  For others, it can be the difference between a Business surviving or not. 

Among my family, I am the only one to be deeply affected financially by the pandemic, so my view on the lockdown and restrictions do differ in how soon I wish to see them lifted. 

Unfortunately, there is often little sympathy for those who have lost Businesses and income over this.  Our tough luck it seems.  I've had some people say to me that it serves me right for taking the risky route of being self employed.  Mention any mental health issues over the lockdown to others and you're asked "how would you cope in the 2nd World War".  That comparison seems to crop up a lot for some reason, though I can't see the connection myself.  

The full truth on the economic damage is probably being shielded from us, whilst focus remains on eliminating the virus, but I expect we will not be in the dark much longer, and there will be further costs financially, though this time shared more equally among the population.  No doubt in years to come, there will be much debate on the handling of the virus, and how it can be tackled better should it happen again.  I hope this is a once in a generation event.  It would be hard to go through this, just to have another virus 4 or 5 years from now.

[Llaasseerr]

14 hours ago, Llaasseerr said:

Re: gamut clipping, I finally took a look at one of the shots on this guy's page. Here's a shot bought into ACES which of course has a larger gamut than sgamut3.cine, then it's remapped to display on a P3D65 monitor. I would say that the issue you're seeing is that on the web page there is no correct gamut transform from a wide gamut to something like rec709. However there is still some funkiness from the digital numbers in the top right corner. I'm not sure if that's a compression artifact, or possibly to do with chroma subsampling, or it could be something that is still out of gamut and requires something like the "Neon Suppression LMT" in Resolve. Or maybe the sensor is clipping - it looks like the red channel has hit the dynamic range limit. I have a feeling it all might have been okay if shot raw though.

EDIT: It seems that behind the scenes the OS color management or the web browser is transforming it so it should display correctly on a regular sRGB monitor. Hard to tell how this will look for you though!

I noticed the ugly falloff and stepiness around the blooming blue lights on the left after I posted this image. Without doing some pixel peeping in the chroma channels, I think this may be to do with chroma subsampling and lossy compression. Again, it would be interesting to shoot a scene like this in raw. You would also get the extra 2 bits in log for colour transitions, so that's 4096 vs 1024 discreet integer log steps per channel which is very efficient.

It's not that I think raw is a panacea, but it does everything that something like a log encoded ProRes444 does and a little bit more. For me, the bench mark is always a film scan and then Alexa log C. And tbh I did not have any plans to shoot with any of these Sony cams in anything but raw, unless absolute convenience was required. I really wish more cameras shot internal raw or log ProRes444.

[deezid]

15 hours ago, Llaasseerr said:

Re: gamut clipping, I finally took a look at one of the shots on this guy's page. Here's a shot bought into ACES which of course has a larger gamut than sgamut3.cine, then it's remapped to display on a P3D65 monitor. I would say that the issue you're seeing is that on the web page there is no correct gamut transform from a wide gamut to something like rec709. However there is still some funkiness from the digital numbers in the top right corner. I'm not sure if that's a compression artifact, or possibly to do with chroma subsampling, or it could be something that is still out of gamut and requires something like the "Neon Suppression LMT" in Resolve. Or maybe the sensor is clipping - it looks like the red channel has hit the dynamic range limit. I have a feeling it all might have been okay if shot raw though.

EDIT: It seems that behind the scenes the OS color management or the web browser is transforming it so it should display correctly on a regular sRGB monitor. Hard to tell how this will look for you though!

Try a still with orange/tungsten lights, they'll turn dark. It also happens with the Sony Venice and shows up in many shows shot on it. 
The same issue occured on the Panasonic S1 and the first firmware supporting V-Log, but with firmware 1.4 everything gamut and processing-related was fixed. Since it's a Sony it'll probably never be fixed and even Blackmagic does better with their near out of gamut handling since Gen 5.

 

18 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

I wouldn’t call the Sony’s weak but the s1/s1h/s5 is definitely better. 

There are worse contenders indeed. Doesn't mean that cheaper cameras such as the Pocket4k, 6k (Pro) and Panasonic S5/S1 seriously outperform the A7sIII and therefor FX3 in terms of video quality. Sony is just more convenient. 

(screenshots: FX6 S-Gamut3.cine, ACEScct, Rec709 odt)

[TomTheDP]

1 hour ago, deezid said:

Try a still with orange/tungsten lights, they'll turn dark. It also happens with the Sony Venice and shows up in many shows shot on it. 
The same issue occured on the Panasonic S1 and the first firmware supporting V-Log, but with firmware 1.4 everything gamut and processing-related was fixed. Since it's a Sony it'll probably never be fixed and even Blackmagic does better with their near out of gamut handling since Gen 5.

 

There are worse contenders indeed. Doesn't mean that cheaper cameras such as the Pocket4k, 6k (Pro) and Panasonic S5/S1 seriously outperform the A7sIII and therefor FX3 in terms of video quality. Sony is just more convenient. 

(screenshots: FX6 S-Gamut3.cine, ACEScct, Rec709 odt)

You think the P4K outperforms the A7S3/FX3 in terms of dynamic range?

[deezid]

3 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

You think the P4K outperforms the A7S3/FX3 in terms of dynamic range?

Not in a synthetic test such as IMATEST which prefers heavily denoised greyscale patches over actual detail and texture, but yes, I do.
The A7sIII has some awful internal processing which other cameras usually don't suffer from.

[IronFilm]

On 3/2/2021 at 1:02 AM, SteveV4D said:

To be a slave, you have to be owned by someone and subject to their orders; working with no reward or remuneration.

Last time I checked, I'm subject to the orders of the government. (hence why I'm currently in living in lockdown, if this can be called "living")

And yes, we do indeed work for long stretches of the year without remuneration, as what we produce gets stolen away by the government. Did you know Tax Freedom Day doesn't arrive until mid April in the USA? (and not until May/June for New Zealanders!! Yes, we spent nearly half the year working for the government!)

That's longer than many past slaves of history spent working for their Masters!!

We're living in the matrix, we're cows being farmed to feed the government machine. 
 

(a video made by one of my friends, enjoy the kiwi accent)

[IronFilm]

Hang on, how did we get to be talking about slavery in a general sense??? 

I was very specifically taking about timecode! 😅

On 3/1/2021 at 10:11 PM, IronFilm said:

Make it be the slave, not the master. 

As of course obviously we shouldn't in general ever have the camera be the master for timecode! 😮 Hell no. 

You want that to be your audio recorder (assuming it is of professional standard), or one of your timecode boxes to be picked as master. (then everything is slaved to that)

[SteveV4D]

2 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

Hang on, how did we get to be talking about slavery in a general sense??? 

 

I replied to the wrong thread, that's how.  This should be in another thread regarding Covid.  I must admit I was confused why my reply wasn't showing up in that thread.  

[IronFilm]

  

On 3/2/2021 at 1:02 AM, SteveV4D said:

Unfortunately, there is often little sympathy for those who have lost Businesses and income over this.  Our tough luck it seems.  I've had some people say to me that it serves me right for taking the risky route of being self employed.  Mention any mental health issues over the lockdown to others and you're asked "how would you cope in the 2nd World War".  That comparison seems to crop up a lot for some reason, though I can't see the connection myself.  

There were definitely many serious mental issues that arose out of WW2, both from those who went to the front line, and those who stayed behind as well. 
That's not something we should want. (& yet, many desire lockdowns)

We should universally recognize war as "a bad thing", any comparisons to the worst war in history is a horrifying thing to do and should be a wake up call that we're doing something wrong!
(not that I believe a month of lockdowns for say Londoners is equivalent to a month of WW2 was for them, but still.... the fact that the effects of lockdowns are so severe that people find it a reasonable comparison to leap to is in itself I find concerning )

On 3/2/2021 at 1:02 AM, SteveV4D said:

The full truth on the economic damage is probably being shielded from us, whilst focus remains on eliminating the virus, but I expect we will not be in the dark much longer, and there will be further costs financially, though this time shared more equally among the population.  No doubt in years to come, there will be much debate on the handling of the virus, and how it can be tackled better should it happen again.  I hope this is a once in a generation event.  It would be hard to go through this, just to have another virus 4 or 5 years from now.

I completely agree with all your points I quoted in this paragraph, especially what I bolded at the start of your paragraph. 

We're being artificially pumped up at the moment, but the hangover will arrive eventually. It can't be pushed off into the future forever. 

"Fear the Boom and Bust: Keynes vs. Hayek" (rap battle)

 

[Rob Givens]

I’m a DP looking for a “Viewfinder / Scout  / Crash camera” to work alongside the Venice when shooting films.

Questions:

1. Can this camera do 2x Anamorphic De-Squeeze, to stretch out the image when working with anamorphic glass?

2. Can you create custom frame lines, like we can with the Venice.  ‘User Rectangles’ they’re sometimes referred to.

And/all help would be appreciated.

- Rob G.

[Tim Sewell]

I think I'm right in saying that there is no built-in anamorphic capability. I would be very surprised if there were user-customisable frames.

[IronFilm]

13 hours ago, Rob Givens said:

I’m a DP looking for a “Viewfinder / Scout  / Crash camera” to work alongside the Venice when shooting films.

Questions:

1. Can this camera do 2x Anamorphic De-Squeeze, to stretch out the image when working with anamorphic glass?

2. Can you create custom frame lines, like we can with the Venice.  ‘User Rectangles’ they’re sometimes referred to.

And/all help would be appreciated.

- Rob G.

I'd also look into getting a Z Cam E2 Series. (such as E2-M4 or E2-S6)

Would give you the features and quality you're seeking, you could even equip it with a "native" PL Mount or E Mount like the Venice itself. 

[IronFilm]

 

From Newshooter:

Quote

For an upcoming short film series, John Radel ACS and his team used a Sony FX3 to help achieve their vision. They wanted to use a small, lightweight camera to help them move around quickly, but they also needed something that was able to capture image quality that was up there with more expensive digital cinema cameras.

 

[kye]

Here's an overview of the FX3 version 3.0 firmware and the "gotchas" that lurk behind the new features Sony claim..

Incidentally, this guys YT channel is very high quality, in terms of production design as well as quality of information.  He's a DP-first and tech second kind of guy, so things are all practical and level-headed.  My only criticism is that his uploads are few and sometimes far between, but maybe that's a fundamental problem of expertise - those that have it are elsewhere doing things in the real world instead of just being on YT.