4K now for $400

[David Elkins]

Is there anyone out there who has actually sent in their camera to Sony for the 4K mod yet? I called them a few weeks back and they took my info and said I was on a list and they would call me when they were ready to start accepting FS700s for this work. Have heard nothing yet.

Also, wondering if anyone has heard how long we should expect to be without the camera while the work is being done. Anyone? Bueller?

[Tim Dashwood]

Mine is going in either Friday or Monday. I'm just waiting for my dealer to confirm when they are ready.

I learned some additional interesting facts from my dealer:

- The upgrade is free of charge if you purchase a HXR-IRF5 ($2500). Otherwise it's $400 to cover the bench-fee for the service department to upgrade hardware and firmware.

- 2K RAW is derived from the 4K RAW, so there is no line-skipping or sensor cropping.

- In RAW mode the FS700 captures linear light as 16-bit RAW with a 12-bit payload, in 12 bits of precision, which means 64 times as many colors as 10-bit recording.

- SLog2 is definitely included in this upgrade and cannot be upgraded separately through a simple firmware update.

- You will be able to record AVCHD internally while recording RAW externally and the start/stop + fps & TC will match on the clips. This means you can use the AVCHD as proxy media in editing. Simultaneous recording is not available in SM or SSM mode.

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by Tim Dashwood

- 2K RAW is derived from the 4K RAW, so there is no line-skipping or sensor cropping.

I'd appreciate an explanation of the terminology being used here, because as it stands it doesn't make sense.

"RAW" has generally been taken to mean a single value for each photosite of the chip - a single number because it's representing purely a value for illumination. (Whether it represents R,G, or B is determined by the location and what filter covers it.) Hence "RAW" means the dimensions of the chip by definition. A 3840x2160 Bayer chip will give 4K RAW, a 1920x1080 chip will give 2K RAW etc.

If there is no sensor cropping happening - the image is derived from the full sensor area - then 2K must mean that each pixel must correspond to a 2x2 Bayer block - 1 red, 1 blue and 2 green photosites. So - what actually is the "2K RAW" that we are talking about? Is each pixel now three values, one each for R,G, B? Or does it just take one value of the four to simulate a pseudo Bayer? Or.... what actually is "2K RAW" in this case?

[Bryan McCullough]

I've had my FS700 upgraded and am now seriously looking at putting the pieces together for 4K/2K Raw.

I hadn't looked at the Convergent Design website in a while and the chart they have up for the 7Q is different that we have been discussing for the FS700.

Odyssey7Q | OLED Monitor & Professional Recorder

It looks like FS700 support is only $795 (without any daily option). Is this correct? That's pretty good news if true.

Am I reading that right?

[David Heath]

Originally Posted by David Heath

I'd appreciate an explanation of the terminology being used here, because as it stands it doesn't make sense.

.................
If there is no sensor cropping happening - the image is derived from the full sensor area - then 2K must mean that each pixel must correspond to a 2x2 Bayer block - 1 red, 1 blue and 2 green photosites. So - what actually is the "2K RAW" that we are talking about? Is each pixel now three values, one each for R,G, B? Or does it just take one value of the four to simulate a pseudo Bayer? Or.... what actually is "2K RAW" in this case?

I've now just seen the Adam Wilt dvinfo article, which seems to give an answer to the question I earlier put - Sony NEX-FS700 in the Raw at DV Info Net

Unfortunately, it's not good news, the relevant chart is http://files.dvinfo.net/wp-content/u...ar2013.036.jpg and it's evident that the resolution is far from what you'd expect from 2K, with considerable aliasing - as shown in the charts the unaliased resolution is only up to 540 lpph. As Adam says:

Now, onto raw recording. The 2K charts show exactly the same artifacts as the 240fps AVCHD charts above; I surmised (and Sony confirmed) that the same pixel-binning used for 240fps is used in all 2k raw capture: that’s how the Sony gets 2K out of a 4K sensor yet maintains the same sensor active area.

So to Tim - I'm afraid the dealer who told you "- 2K RAW is derived from the 4K RAW, so there is no line-skipping or sensor cropping." seems to have been incorrect.

From what I've seen, then whilst for 4K the FS700 and the RAW option is performing very well indeed, the 2K RAW mode on this camera is to be avoided.

[Tim Schick]

Originally Posted by Alister Chapman

The Odyssey will do 240fps at 2K continuously as will the Sony R5.

But someone please correct me if i'm wrong, but as I read the Convergent Design actual record times you ONLY GET 20 MINUTES of record time on a mandatory TWO 512gb SSD cards ($1200 EACH.) So, it looks like about $2500 in cards just to shoot 20 minutes in 2K 240fps. We're looking at this whole set up because we shoot outdoors content and want the super slomo... but for only 20 minutes and then change cards (another $2500) or stop to dump footage doesn't sound feasible.

Odyssey7Q | OLED Monitor & Professional Recorder

Can anyone speak to this yet? If true, are there at least 'pre-record' or 'cache' options where you wouldn't have to shoot continuously... but could 'choose' your shots as they happen... so as not to burn up your 20 minutes?

I'm a novice here admittedly, but we were super excited about this whole workflow (much more budget friendly then the EPIC RED we've been renting) but now that I've heard this I'm kind of deflated. We'd have to have $10k-$15k in cards to shoot for a day.

I'm hitting the pre-thanks button for any advice.

[Dave Sperling]

240fps generates a lot of data at 2K. Of course if I'm reading the chart properly, that 20 minutes is your 'live recording' time,which at 24fps playback equates to 200 minutes (3 hrs 20 minutes) of slo-mo video. I think if planning to record high speed stuff it would be natural to start out with 4 or 6 of the 512GB SSD's (since the record system seems to write to both drives simultaneously to get sufficient record speed.
My guess is that it's an awful lot of data going through the system to have any kind of viable cache option in the recorder when data is coming through at 10x speed. I'd think high speed memory to deal with that kind of cache size would still be awfully expensive. After all, memory for a 15 second cache at normal 24fps record speed becomes a 1.5 second cache at 240fps.
But realistically, how many hours of footage a day do you need to record? The record times are actually a lot better than when I would record 1080/60p from an F3 to a Gemini. So I'm pretty amazed by the potential of the Odyssey7Q.
If you're going to record a lot of data, also start planning for a high end data transfer/storage system, and all the costs involved there. If you're really shooting a lot of data, you should probably have 2 full transfer stations so you can dump your cards in a reasonable length of time. We started doing this with the Gemini, and it saved us many hours of overtime. Remember, you need a minimum of 2 copies of your original camera data!
And of course, the FS700 already does a very serviceable cache record slo-mo at 120 or 240fps, though obviously not for extended lengths of time.

[Graeme Hay]

Sent my camera out last Monday, they finished the upgarde on Thursday ($400CAD + Tax) and I should get it Monday.