Are Sony sensors ruining video with the 'Sony look'?

[seanzzxx]

To be clear Blackmagic vehemently denies the above statement and says that any noise/detail differences are due to the different debayering.

[kye]

20 minutes ago, seanzzxx said:

To be clear Blackmagic vehemently denies the above statement and says that any noise/detail differences are due to the different debayering.

That could certainly be true.

Debayering involves interpolation (like rescaling does) so the different algorithms can create significantly different amounts of edge detail, which at high-bitrate codecs would be quite noticeable even if the radius of the differences was under 2 pixels.

[austinchimp]

It would be interesting to see some detailed technical analysis of why images from different cameras look so different - for example the GH5 and the Arri Alexa. We know they do look different, and even if you took both images and outputted them to the exact same compressed h264 file format, there would still be a massive difference between them. Even discounting the obvious colour and dynamic range differences it seems to be there is a massive difference in the texture of the image and motion itself.

But what exactly is happening in the pipeline of a GH5, or A7SIII that makes it different? Then we could start to work out which specific process was to blame, and maybe how to undo it or ask for manufacturers to change it. I guess without one of the manufacturers opening up their secret recipe, we'll never know.

All I know is fairly vague terms like 'noise reduction' and 'sharpening'. I do agree with @kye that sharpening+processing+compression is likely an irreversible destructive process.

[kye]

11 hours ago, austinchimp said:

It would be interesting to see some detailed technical analysis of why images from different cameras look so different - for example the GH5 and the Arri Alexa. We know they do look different, and even if you took both images and outputted them to the exact same compressed h264 file format, there would still be a massive difference between them. Even discounting the obvious colour and dynamic range differences it seems to be there is a massive difference in the texture of the image and motion itself.

But what exactly is happening in the pipeline of a GH5, or A7SIII that makes it different? Then we could start to work out which specific process was to blame, and maybe how to undo it or ask for manufacturers to change it. I guess without one of the manufacturers opening up their secret recipe, we'll never know.

All I know is fairly vague terms like 'noise reduction' and 'sharpening'. I do agree with @kye that sharpening+processing+compression is likely an irreversible destructive process.

I've been trying to pull this apart for a long time, or maybe it just seems like a long time, it's hard to tell!

I get the sense that the difference is a culmination of all the little things, and that the Alexa does all of the things you mention very well, and most cameras don't do these things nearly as well.

Further to that, each of us has different sensory sensitivities, so while one person might be very bothered by rolling shutter (for example) the next person may not mind so much, etc.  Also, the "lesser" cameras, like the GH5, will do some things more poorly than others, for example the 400Mbps ALL-I 10-bit 4K mode isn't as good as an Alexa, but it's significantly better than something like the A7S2 with its 100Mbps 8-bit 4K mode.  And finally, the work you are doing will require different aspects, like dynamic range being more important in uncontrolled lighting and rolling shutter being more important in high-movement scenes and (especially) when the camera is moving a lot.

So in this sense, camera choice is partly a matter of finding the best overlap between a cameras strengths, your own sensitivities / preferences, and the type of work you are doing.  

Furthermore, I would imagine that some cameras exceed the Alexas capability, at least in some aspects.  These examples are rarer, and it depends on which Alexa you are talking about, but if we take the original Alexa Classic as the reference, then the new Alexa 65 exceeds it in many ways.  I believe RED has models that may meet or exceed the Alexa line in terms of Dynamic Range (it's hard to get reliable measures of this so I won't state that as fact) and I'm sure there are other examples.  

There are other considerations beyond image though, considering that the subject of the image is critical, and I couldn't do my work at all if I had an Alexa, firstly because I couldn't carry the thing for long enough, and secondly that I'd get kicked out of the various places that I like to film, which includes out in public and also in private places like museums, temples, etc which reject "professional" shooting, which they judge by how the camera looks.

Everything is a compromise, and the journey is long and deep.  I've explored many aspects here on the forums though, and I'm happy to discuss whichever aspects you care to discuss as I enjoy the discussions and learning more.  Many of the threads I started seem to fall off, but often I have progressed further than the contributions I have made in the thread, often because I came back to it after a break, or because I've developed a sense of something but can't prove it, so if you're curious about anything then just ask 🙂