In Broadcast - December 2011/January 2012 - 72

InFOCUS

Sony F65 ‘30 Years In The Making’
Sony’s next generation CineAlta Sykes said: “It was really the digital cinematography camera the overall picture performance that F65 is described as a step-change people really started to get excited in the quest for the ‘look’ of 65mm about. We have a great resolution film. and a fantastic dynamic range, Much of the attention has 14 stops of latitude, and a wider focused on the new 8K sensor colour reproduction – capturing a technology as Peter Sykes, Sony wider range of colours than we’ve Strategic Marketing Manager for ever been able to do before on a Digital Cinematography, explains: camera designed for digital motion “The key things about the sensor picture capture. are that compared to a normal “We’ve really taken the quality to sensor the pixels are effectively a higher level.” rotated by 45 degrees and this Sykes said that there were two allows us to increase the packing ways to operate the F65: “One is density considerably. We are calling to shoot at the highest resolution it an 8K sensor at which the camera because if you look can generate. That at the sensor layout would be true 4K on an 8K grid there operation and using is a pixel of some data F65 RAW colour, either red mode 16-bit linear or green or blue at RAW. The second every 8K position. way we can set the “Normal 4K Bayer camera is to operate pattern there is a in High Definition red or green or blue mode recording onto pixel on every 4K the memory card grid. So the result in an HD picture means that for a 4K using HDCAM SR output we have a compression which real 4K green pixel is very high quality for every 4K output and well known in – so that’s pixel-forthe industry.” SR-R4 SRMASTER pixel matching in the dockable recorder While the green signal. choice to be made “Because there is a real green is either F65 RAW or HDCAM pixel in every horizontal and SR, Sony has worked with a vertical position this means that range of partners to integrate F65 not only do we have a full vertical RAW using the Sony SDK into 4K resolution and full horizontal the workflow for post-roduction 4K resolution we also have full tools. Partners include: Adobe® diagonal 4K resolution. Premiere® Pro, AJA, Apple Final “We can therefore considerably Cut Pro, ASSIMILATE, Avid’s Media reduce any aliasing in the image – Composer®, Blackmagic Design, in fact we can reduce it to pretty Da Vinci Resolve, Colorfront, much zero. That means we can Deluxe, Digital Film Tree, EFILM, very finely tune the optical low FilmLight, Fotokem nextLAB, pass filter and achieve a high The Foundry, Image Systems’ contrast picture compared to a Nucoda, LightIron, Sony Vegas™ conventional 4K Bayer.” Pro, The PixelFarm®, Quantel, Sony claim that the 8K image YoYotta – essentially implementing sensor, with 20 megapixels, offers a gateway to a complete, end-tohigher image fidelity than any other end 4K mastering workflow. camera and the short film shot with The Sony sensor is the first to the F65 screened at IBC was well provide a dedicated green photosite received. for each pixel in the 4K output image. This is twice the amount of green resolution compared with traditional 4K Bayer pattern sensors, providing a significant improvement in image resolution suited to VFX processing. The sensor can run at up to maximum 120fps. This sensor performance, with no gamma applied, combined with 16-bit RAW output makes the F65 the first image capture system designed from the ground up to support the Academy IIF-ACES (Image Interchange Framework, Academy Colour Encoding Specification). Richard Lewis, Sony Product Specialist for Digital Cinematography, said that many lenses had been tried out on the camera that utilises the PL lens mount meaning that popular 35mm film lenses can be used with the associated metadata interfacing with ARRI Lens Data System, Cooke iTechnology. A dockable SR memory recorder – model SR-R4 – attaches to the camera to record directly onto an SR memory card of 256 GB, 512 GB or 1TB capacity with data security and sustained throughput of 5Gbps. A 1TB memory

Peter Sykes, Sony Strategic Marketing Manager for Digital Cinematography

The “super 35mm” Sony F65 is due to be shipped in January. Steven Preston talks to Sony’s Peter Sykes, Strategic Marketing Manager for Digital Cinematography, and Richard Lewis, Sony Product Specialist for Digital Cinematography about the launch of the top end CineAlta camera system.

SR-PC4 SRMASTER data transfer unit

72

Even compared to something like the F35, Sony has been able to take the quality to a higher level yet at a keen price point. The F65 package (which was available at IBC for €75,000 in a limited offer) included a Sony F65 camera, rotary shutter, an SR-R4 SRMASTER dockable recorder; one 256Gb SR memory card; a viewfinder; and an SR-PC4 SRMASTER data transfer unit. In a camera pitched at highend drama, feature film and commercials sectors that is surely a good proposition for staggeringly detailed imagery.

card recording at 24fps will store 50 minutes and at 120fps will store 15mins of footage in 4K 16-bit RAW.
The F65 is Sony’s answer in the quest for a truly filmic look

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/inbroadcast/id468652679?mt=8 http://www.linkedin.com/home?trk=hb_tab_home_top http://www.twitter.com/inbroadcast http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpzEatLsHdE&feature=youtube_gdata_player http://www.facebook.com/pages/InBroadcast-e-zine/226166444076212 http://WWW.INBROADCAST.COM http://www.youtube.com/user/mysonyprofessional#p/search/0/g4qXxrDoNRw http://www.youtube.com/user/mysonyprofessional#p/search/0/g4qXxrDoNRw

In Broadcast - December 2011/January 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of In Broadcast - December 2011/January 2012