4K out of an F35?

[Max Field]

Looked up the F35 again and am still in absolute shock that this thing is still listing for over $5,000. A 2K camera without internal SSD recording in 2023 for over $5,000.......

Edited June 15, 2023 by Max Field

[Robin Phillips]

its picture rivals or beats the alexa classics, even the mini in some circumstances. plus that global shutter. with ultra primes it upscales to 4k in post with no problem

[Max Field]

52 minutes ago, Robin Phillips said:

its picture rivals or beats the alexa classics, even the mini in some circumstances. plus that global shutter. with ultra primes it upscales to 4k in post with no problem

Some F55s and Alexa Classics are cheaper cameras than the F35 at this point though. It has consistently been at $5000-$6500 for the last 5 years now.

[Robin Phillips]

I mean, I just listed some of the reasons why it still has value. I dont think the F55 is remotely in the same class image wise. The alexa is debatable, IMO the F35 makes for a more filmic and pleasing image out of the box through hdsdi than the Alexa except in certain lowlight conditions, where some of the CCDness of it can get a little wonky. But even then, the Alexa classics also dont have the best low light performance in the universe, though they dont have the weird shit that can sometimes happen on a very under exposed CCD picture. 

The market is the market, and so long as people are willing to pay 5k for an F35 thats what its price will be. Same for the alexa classic or any other camera really. 

[David Mullen ASC]

12 hours ago, John Shell said:

Forgive me but I’m still confused about this camera’s sensor. How exactly does this camera not perform any demosaicing when each photosite only gets 1 color just like a Bayer sensor ?? 

The color filter in the Genesis/ F35 is not a mosaic pattern that is 50% green / 25% red / 25% blue, it’s a series of repeated vertical red, green, and blue stripes filtering the light hitting the photo sites. There are 2K red, 2K green, 2K blue, 6K total photo sites. So there is no interpolation / upscaling of red and blue compared to green needed since the recording is 2K RGB (I’m calling 1.9K HD “2K” to simplify.)

In a 4K sensor with a Bayer CFA, you have 2K green, 1K red, 1K blue from which you might want to create 4K RGB, so information in each color channel requires some interpolation/ upscaling. I’m not being completely accurate here though but you get the idea.

[Carl Nenzen Loven]

On 6/15/2023 at 12:02 PM, Max Field said:

Some F55s and Alexa Classics are cheaper cameras than the F35 at this point though. It has consistently been at $5000-$6500 for the last 5 years now.

Well. It was the last true CCD cam out there, so if that is your flavor, it’s the only option. And arguably the cleanest 1080p/2k image out there you can get.

The footage looks unique. And only 213 was actually made, so there is a limited supply, which isn’t increasing.

And finally, you are just looking in the wrong places. I got mine for $3700 with an odyssey 7q included. The ones posted on eBay is just there to prove a point. Most sell for $4000-5000.

I love mine, and I will probably never sell it. I spent more on it then I bought it for, but it’s a tank. I bet Mr Mullen has his own opinion on this, but Mr Yedlin recently said in a podcast that the F35 was a camera the world gave up on too quickly, it actually is a great cam, just needed some more love.

 

C

[Max Field]

25 minutes ago, Carl Nenzen Loven said:

Well. It was the last true CCD cam out there, so if that is your flavor, it’s the only option. And arguably the cleanest 1080p/2k image out there you can get.

The footage looks unique. And only 213 was actually made, so there is a limited supply, which isn’t increasing.

And finally, you are just looking in the wrong places. I got mine for $3700 with an odyssey 7q included. The ones posted on eBay is just there to prove a point. Most sell for $4000-5000.

I love mine, and I will probably never sell it. I spent more on it then I bought it for, but it’s a tank. I bet Mr Mullen has his own opinion on this, but Mr Yedlin recently said in a podcast that the F35 was a camera the world gave up on too quickly, it actually is a great cam, just needed some more love.

 

C

A 2K camera without "ARRI" on it is simply an extremely hard sell for clients. There's 200 of them but how many human beings on planet earth are aware of it and actively want it for their next project... Maybe 50?

[Robin Phillips]

2 hours ago, Max Field said:

A 2K camera without "ARRI" on it is simply an extremely hard sell for clients. There's 200 of them but how many human beings on planet earth are aware of it and actively want it for their next project... Maybe 50?

the answer is, enough to keep the market price of the camera still at around $5k.

 

[Max Field]

3 minutes ago, Robin Phillips said:

the answer is, enough to keep the market price of the camera still at around $5k.

 

Normal market circumstances would agree. But given how people still want $1000 for Digital Betacam rigs that stay on eBay for years on end suggests Gen Xers have a major problem with sunk cost fallacy.

[Carl Nenzen Loven]

3 hours ago, Max Field said:

A 2K camera without "ARRI" on it is simply an extremely hard sell for clients. There's 200 of them but how many human beings on planet earth are aware of it and actively want it for their next project... Maybe 50?

Point being?

Half of the current owners are art film makers, the other spread out on eccentrics/passion lovers of the camera.

Even an Alexa is a hard sell for a client nowadays since FX3 is had for pocket change.

C

[Robin Phillips]

9 minutes ago, Max Field said:

Normal market circumstances would agree. But given how people still want $1000 for Digital Betacam rigs that stay on eBay for years on end suggests Gen Xers have a major problem with sunk cost fallacy.

I think you're view of the market is too narrow. if there is some specific application necessary for a digibetacam workflow (local tv news that hasnt upgraded maybe? doesnt have to be US domestic), or for spare parts or the like. Plus sometimes if you need period footage you'll want to shoot on a period camera. GLOW did this, retrofitting some SD NTSC broadcast cameras for certain shots. Thats not a sunk cost fallacy scenario. In the cast of an F35, it can be useful in a sports scenario, capturing blank gun fire as an element cleanly (to avoid rolling shutter issues), or just because someone likes how it looks. Thats no crime. Hell, NASA has a ton of research footage of the recent SLS launch that was shot on 16 and 35 high speed along with their digital because the film held the difference between the highlights and blacks better than the high speed digital. In almost all senses the photosonics cameras are obsolete, yet they allowed for a clearer picture of what was happening with the engines than the newer stuff could.

Ultimately, though, Im not quite sure why you care. Like, who cares if someone wants to use a certain tool that you dont want to use? What matters is what they do with it, and if it achieves the result they want. After all, what we're talking about is art. 

[Max Field]

2 minutes ago, Robin Phillips said:

Like, who cares if someone wants to use a certain tool that you dont want to use?

I'm not saying I'd never want to use it, it would be an interesting camera to play around with some day, but people treating their obsolete tech like a baseball card isn't exactly pro-art or pro-education for that matter. Nonsensical prices are what prevent the youth from learning about this stuff.

[Carl Nenzen Loven]

1 minute ago, Max Field said:

I'm not saying I'd never want to use it, it would be an interesting camera to play around with some day, but people treating their obsolete tech like a baseball card isn't exactly pro-art or pro-education for that matter. Nonsensical prices are what prevent the youth from learning about this stuff.

Yeah, it comes more across like you are just sore about this.

Most of us owners look at them like a classic car we still use. And therefore we treasure them.

As you said, there are a buttload of F3, F55, and Alexa classics. Take your pick and keep shooting.

Don’t be mad because we like taking care of ours ?

(I just made mine run on TB50s, Ronin battery, to get better runtime)

C

[Max Field]

2 minutes ago, Carl Nenzen Loven said:

Yeah, it comes more across like you are just sore about this.

Most of us owners look at them like a classic car we still use. And therefore we treasure them.

As you said, there are a buttload of F3, F55, and Alexa classics. Take your pick and keep shooting.

Don’t be mad because we like taking care of ours ?

(I just made mine run on TB50s, Ronin battery, to get better runtime)

C

I could drop $20k cash on a camera right now if I wanted to, I'm just anti financial gatekeeping. The under 25 crowd would care about cinematography as an artform way more if it wasn't so artificially expensive in certain areas.

[Carl Nenzen Loven]

Just now, Max Field said:

I could drop $20k cash on a camera right now if I wanted to, I'm just anti financial gatekeeping. The under 25 crowd would care about cinematography as an artform way more if it wasn't so artificially expensive in certain areas.

Great. I literally didn’t say you didn’t have money.

I just say you sounded sore about it. It’s a sellers market. If you think it is a shit camera worth less and can’t find a proper forum to buy it, that’s on you ?

I see complete F65 packages for less than 5k, if you look hard enough.

C

[Aapo Lettinen]

rather than wine, I think digital cameras are more like cheap beer... they don't age well and at certain point people just want to get rid of them unless they want to collect them for some reason ?  we are seeing lots of +10 year old "digital cinematography" cameras sold for peanuts on ebay and no one seems to buy them because newer technology has too many advantages in most uses such a old camera could be used for.

I have processed enough thousands hours of F5 and F55 footage that I can say pretty certainly that at least the F55 would look way way better to most users and audiences than the F35 in most shooting situations.  But if there is something in the F35 image that pleases a certain filmmaker, then why not use it for a certain project, sure. One could get a used F55 with a raw recorder and accessories for much less than the F35 current prices and like said it would be a much better camera for most shooting situations and projects, but some certain projects could ask for a different look and one might actually WANT TO USE older gritty technology like the F900 or Red One M  for them to get weird artifacts and funny colour reproduction, interesting noise patterns and funny dynamic range and highlight issues.

I fully understand "camera test short film projects" too, I am personally making those every now and then and they can be fun to make. In most cases it is just not reasonable to expect such projects to become "fully self supporting movies" because, well, their sole purpose is to test a certain camera model and show off its qualities to fellow filmmakers and fanboys. Wanted to mention because I think most older video equipment (and also film equipment too) is used mainly for making these "camera test simple story shorts" than to make "actual real movies where storytelling is more important than technology".  If really just wanting to make narrative stuff and tell great stories one could use almost any modern-ish camera and would not be that interested in technology... but it is much easier to be obsessed about technology and tell oneself it is impossible to shoot because not having this or that camera, than to actually just make the darn movie ?  

It was a real eye opener to work many years on nature films / documentaries where there could be 20 different cameras used on a single project and everything was managed to get working well on the big screen in the end

[Carl Nenzen Loven]

2 minutes ago, aapo lettinen said:

rather than wine, I think digital cameras are more like cheap beer... they don't age well and at certain point people just want to get rid of them unless they want to collect them for some reason ?  we are seeing lots of +10 year old "digital cinematography" cameras sold for peanuts on ebay and no one seems to buy them because newer technology has too many advantages in most uses such a old camera could be used for.

I have processed enough thousands hours of F5 and F55 footage that I can say pretty certainly that at least the F55 would look way way better to most users and audiences than the F35 in most shooting situations.  But if there is something in the F35 image that pleases a certain filmmaker, then why not use it for a certain project, sure. One could get a used F55 with a raw recorder and accessories for much less than the F35 current prices and like said it would be a much better camera for most shooting situations and projects, but some certain projects could ask for a different look and one might actually WANT TO USE older gritty technology like the F900 or Red One M  for them to get weird artifacts and funny colour reproduction, interesting noise patterns and funny dynamic range and highlight issues.

I fully understand "camera test short film projects" too, I am personally making those every now and then and they can be fun to make. In most cases it is just not reasonable to expect such projects to become "fully self supporting movies" because, well, their sole purpose is to test a certain camera model and show off its qualities to fellow filmmakers and fanboys. Wanted to mention because I think most older video equipment (and also film equipment too) is used mainly for making these "camera test simple story shorts" than to make "actual real movies where storytelling is more important than technology".  If really just wanting to make narrative stuff and tell great stories one could use almost any modern-ish camera and would not be that interested in technology... but it is much easier to be obsessed about technology and tell oneself it is impossible to shoot because not having this or that camera, than to actually just make the darn movie ?  

It was a real eye opener to work many years on nature films / documentaries where there could be 20 different cameras used on a single project and everything was managed to get working well on the big screen in the end

My point exactly.

can you manipulate V-raptor footage to look better than Alexa’s? Certainly!

does some people just love their cameras because they are idiots? For sure.

Granted, except for “Railway to Mauritania” I’m yet to see someone really maxing out the F35. But there are for sure better cameras today.

just not the same camera ?

 

C

[Aapo Lettinen]

filmmakers get used to and learn to love workflows and user interfaces which explains why it is so common to stick to a certain camera model until it is mandatory to switch to a newer one.

For example there has been lots of talks over time about Sony menus being difficult and complicated. In real life one does not usually need to manipulate camera menus very often, normally only at the start of the project and maybe if making some radical setup changes mid shoot. But for most stuff it is "adjust once and forget about it" which makes it pretty trivial how "complicated" the menus actually are if you only need to set it ONCE during the entire project. Still people see "complicated menus" as a huge issue even if actually needing to use them once a month or so ?   to me it just tells that people want to always do everything the same way, being too conservative to try anything new (and on the other hand, it is safer for them to stick to the old habits than to allow any uncertainty even if such uncertainty would make their life better in the end)

I personally like to think that camera bodies come and go. They are just something temporary which was the best choice for now but can change anytime if something more suitable is found. As long as I can use the lenses I want and certain performance (and maybe look) requirements are met, I don't care much what the camera is and I am willing to change it in the blink of an eye if there is even the slightest reason to do so ? 

[Phil Rhodes]

13 hours ago, Max Field said:

Normal market circumstances would agree. But given how people still want $1000 for Digital Betacam rigs that stay on eBay for years on end suggests Gen Xers have a major problem with sunk cost fallacy.

Someone is currently selling an ancient PAG four-position charger, which only handles NiCd batteries, on a battery mount nobody makes anymore, plus three mismatched NiCd batteries, on eBay, for UK£1000 (around $1300) right now. That's gear which is comfortably thirty years old, the batteries will be junk, and only one of them can easily be recelled - even if you wanted to recell something to NiCd. Some people want all the money back, and that gear is ancient, so it goes back further than X.

[Robin Phillips]

18 hours ago, Max Field said:

I could drop $20k cash on a camera right now if I wanted to, I'm just anti financial gatekeeping. The under 25 crowd would care about cinematography as an artform way more if it wasn't so artificially expensive in certain areas.

This is such a weird conversation to me, that a $250,000 camera when new is still too expensive at $5k.

You are aware that the ability to own any of this gear is a super recent phenomenon right? Is it "financial gate keeping" that an Alexa 35 costs 80 grand? or is that the market price based on costs and demand? No one is entitled to any of this stuff. For nearly 100 years the only access to this kind of equipment was through rentals on shows with the budgets to afford them, and you learned by working on those shows in lower tier gigs or through classes and demos. It has never been the case that filmmakers could afford to fully own 100% of the tools necessary to create a hollywood scale feature film (save for a hand full who became billionaires or owned studios), so it make no sense to expect that to be a possibility. Thats not financial gatekeeping either, its just economics. 

But since we do live in the future, TBH you can pick up an FX30 for 2 grand and it'll outperform a camera like the F900 all day, and that was a main stay of mid 2000s tv production. Is it an F35? no. Is it 35mm film? no. is it more than enough to learn to light and shoot with for chump change compared to the highest end of the market? absolutely. Same with older DSLRs. Hell, you can make a pretty decent looking movie on an iphone if you want. Building your skillset is what matters most, not access to a specific sensor or filmstock. 

[Aapo Lettinen]

the main thing is that camera technology has advanced in very big leaps for the past 15 years or so, but the movie theater screen sizes have not changed much at all in the meantime and even the size of average "better" tv sets has stayed about the same for almost 10 years now.

If wanting to use bigger screen you would need to build a new movie theater to house it, and if wanting a larger TV set than certain size limit you would need to make the living room bigger which is not happening because you would need to tear down and rebuild the whole freakin house for that.

So the screen sizes don't change much at all anymore and thus the treshold limit for resolution has long been surpassed for both cinema and home movie / streaming.

Thus the better and better cameras make smaller and smaller difference in the end result, because the audience can't see the difference clearly anymore if the screens are not getting substantially bigger than they are now.

Most of the persons here who have newer TV have either 65" or 75" or 80-something inches but not more. the 65" is normally pretty optimal for the average living rooms here and my 75" is just barely watchable at maximum distance the room allows. If wanting to take full advantage of the modern camera technology I would need to fit, like, a 250 or 300 inch TV here?  It would fill the whole freaking wall of the room and watching it would be like sitting on the front row just next to the cinema screen in theatre... would be just horrible to try to watch it.

So there is strict screen size limitations in both average person's homes and in movie theaters and they pretty much cannot change so any new camera technology can pretty much only compete in colour reproduction, dynamic range and framerates.

I think the "camera technology treshold limit" was surpassed in about 2014 or 2015 and pretty much ANY camera made after that which costs more than 2k or 3k has perfectly good image for cinema release. Doesn't mean that a "better camera" would not be "better" but meaning that even an older and lower quality camera would work without issues because they don't make bad enough cameras anymore that the difference would really show clearly enough for the audience to care ?

[Aapo Lettinen]

that said, if your average easy-to-use-and-cheap-to-buy prosumer setup can shoot good enough material for cinema release and actually make better use of the budget to save critical resources which can be used to make other aspects of the movie better, why an indie filmmaker would even want to bother with a very old, cumbersome and power hungry "ancient top notch digital cinema camera setup" if the audience would not even notice it unless they are shown the making of footage which there surely is available to promote the filmmakers? Purchase a 10k tripod+head kit for starters and then use couple of k's for batteries and 20k for lenses and bazillion bucks to lights etc. just to make it working for some very simple use like shooting a 2 person dialogue.

meaning, is the cool looking old camera mainly used for getting interesting making of footage for promotional purposes instead of making the actual movie better? that sounds like a "camera test short film project" for sure, they are specifically made for showing that "look at us, we shot something stuff with the Alexa / RED / Venice / other cool camera which is currently trending" and no one could care less about the story and if the film is even watchable ?

[Evan Ferrario]

On 7/7/2018 at 12:51 AM, David Mullen ASC said:

Sure, it’s possible, if not probable, that Sony refined the OLPF after the two years or so that the Genesis had the market to themselves. But I think the physical separation between a color stripe and the next time it appears in a row would make color moire almost inevitable. I only did a few things on the F35 compared to the hundreds of hours I did on the Genesis but I don’t recall much difference in the image.

I can say with certainty the Genesis, F35 and SRW-9000 Optical blocks are identical in every way. Interchangeable I have tried optical blocks from F35 in Genesis and vice versa. The OLPF is the same across the line also. 

The ONLY real difference between Genesis and F35 is the F35 seems to be designed with the hot components moved to the outside for better cooling. The F35 has 4 fans, the Genesis has 5.