F65 for $65k

[Emmanuel Plakiotis]

Sony Launches F65 CineAlta Camera

It turns out Sony, has priced very competitive it's latest offering, and gave Red a run for her money...

[John Vincent]

2011 is looking like the year of Sony for sure...

Not sure - given the price - if Sony will be able to make inroads on RED or Alexa, but more is always better.

[Allan Black]

Yep, never sure about RED telegraphing their intentions, I remember a few years ago when someone broke in and stole their prototype but .. if you've got a product site going, you have to say something.

Cheers.

[Emmanuel Plakiotis]

And a Easter egg as well. They give the $20 000 on board recorder for free, if you order before the end of the year.

I am wondering, if there is going to be a price reduction to the F35 and F23, as they are highly overpriced compared to the newer camera. Unless of course Sony thinks that they can justify their price because of the different image sensor (they sport CCD).

[Mark Kenfield]

Very interesting. I guess they're taking it head to head with the Alexa. It never ceases to amaze me how fast these technologies (and economies of scale) are moving these days.

[Brian Drysdale]

Originally Posted by John Vincent

2011
Not sure - given the price - if Sony will be able to make inroads on RED or Alexa, but more is always better.

Depends on the market, but Sony seems to be playing the resolution game with RED talking about true 4k compared to Bayer 4K. In the end It'll depend on what the pictures look like and how well the workflow fits into the TV world.

[Emmanuel Plakiotis]

Not only true 4K to Bayer 4K, but also uncompressed Raw to compressed Raw. On specs at least the Sony camera is very impressive. The only real advantage of Epic is its small size. Very important in 3d, but for most occasions as well.

Digging a little in the recorder's nomenclature, I discovered the following:

"The SR-R4 records 4K Double Bayer 16-bit RAW data and 2K RAW high frame rate data for the highest quality uncompressed recordings."

Does anybody know what "4K double Bayer" means?

[Peter Moretti]

I'm pretty sure that the 4K RAW stream is lightly compressed.

[Jonathan Shaw]

Pretty cool stuff, but as we all know proof is in the tasting.... Will be great to see some images.

[Brian Drysdale]

Originally Posted by Emmanuel Plakiotis

Does anybody know what "4K double Bayer" means?

It could be the way the 8k sensor is arranged with seemingly a zig zag pattern and twice as many green pixels than a traditional 5k Bayer arrangement... Perhaps also there could be a touch of marketing speak in the term. Although, perhaps the uncompressed RAW is more for theatrical productions than television.

Reports from people that have seen the images are good and the optional mechanical shutter seems to give a smoothness to the 24 fps motion

[Emmanuel Plakiotis]

There is a nifty bit rate calculator:
Video bitrate calculator | web.forret.com
Uncompressed 4K 16bit RGB 444 24p is less than 5.5Gbps (memory pack limit) so I guess they really mean uncompressed 4K.
Engadget says that it has a19GBps data rate, but they probably refer to full 8K uncompressed

Brian, there is HDCAM SR mode in the recorder probably aimed for tv drama.

If you consider that Gemini costs $6K for unc. HD then Sony very reasonably charges 3X money ($20k) for more than 4X data rate.
Even the price difference between F65 and Epic is reasonable, considering the difference in specs.

Its very ironic, that after so many years of 4K bragging from Red, it's Sony that will introduce first, a true 4K camera (epic-M is a beta testing model).

[Daniel Browning]

Lies, bald-faced lies, and marketing. Rotate your sensor 45 degrees and watch as the magic of Marketing turns 5K into 8K! For their next camera, maybe Sony will turn 8K into 13K by rotating it back.

[Peter Moretti]

Originally Posted by Emmanuel Plakiotis

There is a nifty bit rate calculator:
Video bitrate calculator | web.forret.com
Uncompressed 4K 16bit RGB 444 24p is less than 5.5Gbps (memory pack limit) so I guess they really mean uncompressed 4K.
Engadget says that it has a19GBps data rate, but they probably refer to full 8K uncompressed

...

I'm not sure how to characterize in terms of # of K the RAW steam "off the sensor." But an engineer from Sony mentioned after the presentation that the RAW data is lightly compressed b/c otherwise its bandwidth would be too great. He also said that compression works better on RAW data than it does on RGB.

[Brian Drysdale]

Originally Posted by Daniel Browning

Lies, bald-faced lies, and marketing. Rotate your sensor 45 degrees and watch as the magic of Marketing turns 5K into 8K! For their next camera, maybe Sony will turn 8K into 13K by rotating it back.

The RED Epic has 13.1 megapixels compared to 20 megapixels claimed on the F65, so there appears to be more.packed in compared to the Epic. Whether are any real advantages to Sony's angled arrangement in practise remains to be seen.

[Peter Moretti]

Originally Posted by Daniel Browning

Lies, bald-faced lies, and marketing. Rotate your sensor 45 degrees and watch as the magic of Marketing turns 5K into 8K! For their next camera, maybe Sony will turn 8K into 13K by rotating it back.

So can you expalin how rotating 5K 45 degrees creates a 20 million pixel sensor?

The pixel count is what it is. Writing "Lies, bald-faced lies, and marketing" doesn't seem very accurate.