Llaasseerr

I had a chance to test this, it does look like the extra green shadow noise introduced by the new autofocus is somewhat reduced by shooting at the higher base ISO 4000 if the situation allows for it. So shooting with an ND could work.

Open gate for the fp is not needed for 35mm anamorphic as is usually shot - just crop the sides.
The current height of a 16:9 recording on the fp and similar affordable full frame cameras matches the height of an Alexa 35 camera recording in open gate. You do lose some resolution from cropping the sides, but it's fine and it also improves rolling shutter speed.

Right, basically the grade is never baked in for vfx delivery but yes the lensing grain etc is baked in if needed. The way to look at it is almost to not think of vfx shots as any different to any non-vfx ("real life"). The exception is totally cg shots on bigger budget films, but even then, ideally they have some real world reference or photographed guide that they are following.
If you look at what Yedlin does, he is indeed bypassing what happens in DI to a degree and he's using Nuke in the same way the vfx houses do. He is basically doing what the color science departments at places like ILM have been developing for years. I believe that he applies a pass on all the shots on his films where he adds his lens emulation and film emulation if vfx have not already integrated that. Which I imagine he still does before DI, but then DI would be comparatively simple. I know he also works with color scientists/developers at places like EFilm or Fotokem though, to port some of his Nuke tools over to Resolve as OFX or DCTL plugins so that some can be done in DI.

This vfx approach has been used for over 15 years. That level of in-camera "photographed" realism was pioneered by ILM in films like War of the World, Pirates 2 and Transformers. What the director is really doing is thinking back to his methodology with his first film and wanting to get back to that immediacy and creative spirit, but with a bigger vfx budget. As has been described, for him the rig was obviously fundamental to that. And I now understand how much they would have saved on shipping lights, cranes, on hotel budgets etc due to the need for less crew and gear - also crediting the high ISO there.

We’re going around in circles.  
It’s not just the weight difference, which is by the way 40% heavier.
It’s how it balances (if it even would) on the freakin custom ronin rig they wanted to use with the specific lenses they chose. I dunno why you want to keep pretending they aren’t real and valid reasons to not use your precious FX6 or Alexa mini.  Maybe if you’re a DP with Garth one day you can convince him to make a different choice.

Nah I got it the first time you pointed it out and it all sounds very valid. Appreciate you sharing this by the way.
I was curious why an FX6 wasn't chosen given it's the same sensor but the cameras is "more pro". My takeaway was that although it's lightweight, the rig needed something even lighter (the FX3).

I’m not sure what caused the issue. Except that I pulled the dummy battery out and back in with the camera still switched on a few times throughout the past few weeks I’ve had it. I’ve always done this with all of my cameras when breaking down my rig after a shoot. I’ve always just left the switch set to “on” with the camera. This is the only cause I can think of. 
Sigma UK told me that the camera expects voltages between 7V and 9V. So I wouldn’t worry about your dummy battery. I’d worry more about the plate you’re using and it’s voltage and amperage it’s outputting. 
 
I’ve also just ordered the powrig dummy battery. I asked powrig if the dummy battery had any advanced circuitry for regulating power. They assured me that it did. I’m not exactly sure if this is true or not 🤷‍♂️ But they assured me 😅
 
I’ve also purchased the newest NP-F battery plate from SmallRig. It has short circuit protection built into all outputs. It was expensive, but my hopes are that I’ll have it for many years using with various camera rigs. 
So my hope is that the combination of both of these accessories (powrig dummy battery and advanced SmallRig plate) avoids this issue of any PCB board frying again lol. 

Yes fair enough. It's definitely got saturation coverage on the sites and channels we al look at, but I haven't seen Sony pushing it in any way. And Sony had zero influence in the production of this movie on any level. There's no way a marketing tie-in has occurred that would dictate the choice of camera. Also there was an embargo on mentioning the camera until after release, and the film bombed lol.
I think the channels are just insatiably curious about what happened here and the crew are prepared to talk.
I noticed poor old Atomos doing an interview with Oren though, trying to get some publicity while they stave off bigger issue like avoiding being delisted on the ASX. Viva ProRes Raw! (Ironically an Apple codec but you wouldn't know it).
Edit: I could be misunderstanding the marketing comments. It has definitely played into the marketing of the film, but with caveats such as after the release. And ultimately that marketing would never dictate the choice of the camera.

I personally disagree that it was marketing, because we are in a fishbowl where we "affordable cine camera enthusiasts" are seeing saturation coverage on it. But outside of that world, hardly anyone knows that - and that would actually be Gareth's and Oren's point, that hopefully no-one would know any better. Other films don't attract press for the camera they shot on because they're shot on an Alexa or maybe a Venice, and that's not news.
There is also the fact that the film did really badly, so at best it can be seen as a failed experiment.
I think Gareth is just a guy that came up using affordable cameras and After Effects and he wanted to get back to that to some degree after getting somewhat reamed by the Disney machine on Rogue One.
It also seems like a pretty compelling story that he went on holiday to all those locations and took the FX3 with him, and he probably just really liked using the camera. Then he had a bunch of camera techs who were able to solve all the problems for him of making it usable in production for a feature of that scale.

I couldn't agree more. There are certainly a few things that Sigma need to define for a proper DI workflow. I understand releasing a camera early and providing firmware updates later as a plan to sell a camera. We might be a few years out from a proper DI workflow documentation from Sigma. 
That being said, the camera most definitely is a beast. I've been very impressed so far!
@Llaasseerr I simply followed their email address listed on their site: info@sigmaphoto.com
It took them a few days to reply, but I appreciate that they did.

Forgot to add that Apple also released LUTs. For a PHONE.

WHOOPS!! 
Yes indeed, that's obviously one very very big typo. 

Continuing this OT on 4K mainly being a Netflix and consumer TV-driven phenomenon vs 2K for theatrical with a lot of VFX, this article gives a pretty accurate breakdown considering it's a non-industry publication:
https://www.vulture.com/2022/07/4k-tv-cgi-review.html
Also it reiterates the point I made that indie films are easier to finish at 4K than bug budget ones.

Back on topic: still waiting for the Ninja V to get a firmware update to support 24P DCI out of the FX3 now it has the firmware update. It's unclear Atomos will support it at all, but here's hoping. It would have to be a 4.2k raw 24p, I guess with a few lines of pixels cropped off the top and bottom to conform to the DCI aspect ratio. 

Definitely interesting findings. I really liked the look of this camera for about a week (lol) as a kind of lower stakes FX3, but after the latest FX3 firmware updates, I'm back in on that.
I'm super interested to see how the upcoming 120p plays out, also given these observations about the thermal behaviour. I wish it wasn't 119.88, but I don't think there's true 120p available in the FX3 or FX6 either, sadly.

According to comments on the above video, someone asked a gaffer who said the whole thing was shot on FX3 and Oren Soffer said this on Twitter:
"We can’t share any technical info JUST yet but promise we will spill all the beans when the film comes out! All I will say for now is just a reminder that any rando can edit IMDb and despite our efforts to contain it the info up on there isn’t accurate, so, grain of salt! ;)"
Not sure why all this mystery around what was used but I sense this should make headlines if/when it is officially revealed that the whole thing was shot on the FX3.

Yeah, that's exactly it, but you'll see that in the big budget shows as well! Eventually it will all be 4k across the board, but right now it's mostly only lower budget projects or the extreme high end meaning like an Imax-shot sequence in a Nolan film. If $100-150m projects are shot on an Alexa 65 and are very vfx heavy, it's still normal to see them being finished at lower than 4k despite the res of the camera original.
Besides Netflix and their 4k push (and good to point out it's associated with flogging tv's), I am a bit out of the loop with what all the streamers are doing for their spec requirements, but it would make sense for any footage for the Volume being shot as hi-res as possible. Also stuff like VR, that's a good place for 8k+.
Yes the 4k hype has pushed Arri forward with the Alexa 35, which is an astonishing camera. And watching a 4k remaster of an old movie scanned off the neg is amazing.
Ah yeah there you go, I shouldn't have said it was a rumor. The dual gain thing I mentioned WAS a rumor though, that sadly hasn't panned out:
https://www.sonyalpharumors.com/fx6-features-19ev-wdr-via-v2-x-firmware-and-wdr-license/
Was hoping to see that in the FX6 and in my fever dreams, the FX3. I did a bit of online searching, and there were a bunch of papers published my Sony engineers in Japan that were using this WDR approach, but it hasn't made it into any mainstream camera releases.
I'm always interested to see dual gain approaches in other sensors like Canon and the GH6. What I noticed is Canon have focused more on cleaning up the shadows, while Arri focused on the highlights. I think this is to do with the power requirements of using a DGO approach to capture highlights since the Alexa has a much higher power draw, but also probably a culture difference where Arri's film background made them more focused on capturing filmic highlights. I can imagine that the engineers at Canon are more interested in a lower noise floor.
Another issue with Canon's DGO is slower rolling shutter compared to when it's turned off, so again an area to improve on.
 

It's one of the reasons I like Sony's stance on the FX3/FX6/a7sIII etc sensor being "only" 4k. It has about the same pixel pitch as the ALEV III sensor. I hope they do another version of these cameras that unleashes the sensor's rumored dual gain ability, if it really is 8k being binned to 4k.
I would really like to see cameras in the affordable price range focusing on higher dynamic range and reduced rolling shutter or having a global shutter. We still haven't quite seen that breakthrough where we are getting a true 13 stops to match the original Alexa in a camera in the sub-10k market.

Oh, absolutely. I just want people to know that super hi res footage isn't a requirement for vfx. It's definitely good pixels over more pixels (Steve Yedlin's mantra, I guess). 4k+ is definitely becoming more popular with vfx shots, but I continue to see work in the region of 2k-3.5k on the most cg-heavy projects because otherwise the work is just too expensive unless it's for an IMAX sequence that can budget for it. Netflix is an outlier here.

It's one of the reasons I like Sony's stance on the FX3/FX6/a7sIII etc sensor being "only" 4k. It has about the same pixel pitch as the ALEV III sensor. I hope they do another version of these cameras that unleashes the sensor's rumored dual gain ability, if it really is 8k being binned to 4k.
I would really like to see cameras in the affordable price range focusing on higher dynamic range and reduced rolling shutter or having a global shutter. We still haven't quite seen that breakthrough where we are getting a true 13 stops to match the original Alexa in a camera in the sub-10k market.

Seems like it's the same reason that everyone else thinks more resolution is better...  We've been shooting moving images for over a century and most of that time it was genuinely below the optimum resolution/sharpness, and now we have achieved it, very few people are smart enough to realise that we've arrived and we need to move on and focus on something else.
Plus, you know, brands do marketing for a reason - it works.... and if your product doesn't fulfil an existing need then job #1 is to create the need.

Cool that makes sense but even still if the footage gets reduced below 3.5K for VFX and delivery, as you say its still a downres from high resolution which benefits the IQ. So its not all going to waste..

Right, but that's not to do with the vfx. It's to do with the dp's choice for the format and the camera. The extra resolving power gives him more dynamic range in the shadows due to less noise, for example, compared to a single ALEV III sensor. Also it's to do with the joys of shooting a digital version of a 65mm film back and using 65mm lenses.
I just came off a very high profile vfx heavy film shot on the 65 and the pulls were 3.5k. So that extra res is typically not making it to the vfx vendors by the time they start. But the extra IQ is baked in on the downres. And the vendors would have reduced them down further before they start work because the delivery required for DI is below 3.5k. So they will shrink resolution wherever they can in order to get the job done on time.

I'm not sure how the whole idea of "higher resolution is good/required for vfx" started, but it's a myth. Practically everything I've worked on has been Alexa plates at 2-3.5k. Particularly for a cg-heavy film like this, it's common to do it at 2k or a bit above, just because it gets way too slow and expensive. I think ironically 4k happens more at the low budget end, and then  of course there's Netflix originals (lol).
It makes a lot more sense if this was primarily shot on Alexa 65, but I do think the FX3/FX6 sensor is very good. It has the same highlight range as the Venice/Venice 2, which is to say it doesn't hold a candle to an Alexa 65 but for the money it's very good. Where the Venice has it beat is that it's cleaner in the shadows, but that's not accounting for the ISO 12800 option with the FX3/6 if you don't mind half a stop less in the highlights. 

I'm not sure how the whole idea of "higher resolution is good/required for vfx" started, but it's a myth. Practically everything I've worked on has been Alexa plates at 2-3.5k. Particularly for a cg-heavy film like this, it's common to do it at 2k or a bit above, just because it gets way too slow and expensive. I think ironically 4k happens more at the low budget end, and then  of course there's Netflix originals (lol).
It makes a lot more sense if this was primarily shot on Alexa 65, but I do think the FX3/FX6 sensor is very good. It has the same highlight range as the Venice/Venice 2, which is to say it doesn't hold a candle to an Alexa 65 but for the money it's very good. Where the Venice has it beat is that it's cleaner in the shadows, but that's not accounting for the ISO 12800 option with the FX3/6 if you don't mind half a stop less in the highlights. 

Can confirm that is the same for me. Have to update the Ninja V to the latest firmware however, maybe that changes something. At least in the specs Atomos says, that the monitor should be able to loop out YCC.