Tests on F3

[David C. Williams]

Sony have said an extra stop in latitude and a 6db increase in noise for S-Log.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the F3 have more useable stops than anything Red has. The only time a Red can come close to the Alexa's dynamic range is in a Red lab. Actual proper testing has always shown another story though.

Alexa-Canon 7D-RED MX latitude comparison

And that's without ARRI raw too.

[Aaron Newsome]

Hi David. A 6db "increase" in noise? Weird, my Viper works the opposite way. Shooting FilmStream (same as S-long essentially) actually "decreases" the noise.

[Ryan Koo]

Yeah, David, I assume you mean "decrease" in noise?

[David C. Williams]

That's what they said, SNR drops from 63db to 57db in S-Log. The extra stop has to come from somewhere I guess.

[Erik Phairas]

I wonder what they did in the FS100 for it to drop all the way to 54db? Man I wish I could afford a F3.

[Giuseppe Pugliese]

someone on here said the AF100 was organic looking... I believe the exact opposite, even the "best" videos from that camera have just been video looking. The F3 on the other hand is a whole different monster... I wouldn't call the AF100 even close to feeling organic in its look.

[Nate Weaver]

Originally Posted by Giuseppe Pugliese

someone on here said the AF100 was organic looking... I believe the exact opposite, even the "best" videos from that camera have just been video looking.

I bet it could if the following was done:

1-Get all that detail processing turned off. Most AF100 users don't seem to care enough to dig into this, from what I've seen.

2-Turn off noise reduction. Video noise can be fine, if it's fine enough to resemble film grain and hasn't been "reduced" or otherwise processed by DSP trying to get rid of it but never really does.

A soft, noisy camera can look great if it's done right. I think the key is just to let it be soft and noisy, not try to sharpen it up by adding white halos around everything and reduce noise until it's 10 pixel wide dancing colored splotches.

[Steve Kalle]

Originally Posted by Nate Weaver

I bet it could if the following was done:

1-Get all that detail processing turned off. Most AF100 users don't seem to care enough to dig into this, from what I've seen.

2-Turn off noise reduction. Video noise can be fine, if it's fine enough to resemble film grain and hasn't been "reduced" or otherwise processed by DSP trying to get rid of it but never really does.

A soft, noisy camera can look great if it's done right. I think the key is just to let it be soft and noisy, not try to sharpen it up by adding white halos around everything and reduce noise until it's 10 pixel wide dancing colored splotches.

I see what he is saying. A good field review over at PVC detailed its issues with highlights and this person had to blur the harsh clipping in post which blurred a lot around it as well. Apparently, with many Panasonic cameras, the chroma clipping begins too early and cannot be altered without desaturating the scene profile. For example, a car's taillights were red when brakes were applied but the AF100 showed a mix of red and orange rather than all red. The author compared it to the Auto Knee in EX-cams.

His term for this issue is "saturated-highlight handling problem".

His conclusion was that the AF100 is great with controlled lighting but not good in all other situations.

Btw, has anyone seen the great video by Andy Shipsides at Abel where he tests the DR and shows how the Cine gammas affect the image by using a waveform? AbelCine Tests the Sony F3 Dynamic Range | CineTechnica

F3 has 12+ stops and almost 900 lines of res while the AF100 has 10 stops and ~680 lines of res. I think the AF100's low res is mainly why some people call it organic. I think it was Andy (in another video) who said that S-Log will increase the DR to 13 stops while losing 3 or 6db of sensitivity in addition to much greater detail in the deep shadows and highlights.

[Pieter de Vries]

Originally Posted by Oleg Kalyan

The footage from F3 from Japan looks from bad to ugly in all senses, terrible event, feel really sorry for Japanese people...
pretty bad chroma and highlights clipping, chroma moiré, if we talk about image quality, getting disappointed in the cam. Low light shots still look very good!
(Having AF100 for good light situations and F3 for low light? :)

Beautifully shot with empathy, however I don't know about anyone else, but I am not that comfortable reading about bad chroma, low light shots and highlight clipping when viewing the content of those clips of the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.

[Jean Daniel Villiers]

In the provideocoalition test it was closer to 13 stop than 12 (he could see a hint of it in the shadows). So with the S-log it could be closer to 14 stops which would be very near the Alexa. The F3 seems to be of the general family of digital camera that tend to have the most information in the shadows. So generally it is better to underexpose to preserve highlight. This has been shown again in the single camera test at Nab.

[Ron Aerts]

Jean, Could you tell more about this test?