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Sigma Fp review and interview / Cinema DNG RAW


Andrew Reid
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SAM_1504.jpg

There were two highlights of IBC 2019 for me. The Sigma Fp, and the Z-CAM range. From the ground-up the Sigma Fp seems to be aimed at us, at artists. A small and incredibly light camera that hits the big full frame notes, some of the niche features like the digital director's viewfinder would be unheard of in a consumer full frame camera from a major manufacturer.

This is clever and will get the camera a lot of use by top-flight talent. Most exciting for me is the focus on the video recording features - which are big leap for Sigma and indeed push the boundaries of whet we expect from a "prosumer" camera.

Cinema DNG RAW 4K 12bit to USB C SSD media

Internal 1080p 12bit internal RAW Cinema DNG uncompressed

Internal 4K RAW uncompressed (bit-depth drops to 8bit at the moment)

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36 minutes ago, Andrew Reid said:

SAM_1504.jpg

I think its when people see and, particularly, hold it in this configuration that the GAS kicks in !! 

Are you watching this @mercer ? ;)

Still think people are underestimating how significant a little camera it can be if Sigma are as responsive to feedback as they seem to want to be.

They really need to sort the price out though.

 

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I believe at $3000, they will not sell many. No log and while some like the lure of raw,  many more would prefer something lighter. I love the concept,  but it will remain very much niche at that price point. It really is a video first camera given that it lacks a mechanical shutter.

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There's some interesting ideas in there.  It will be interesting to see how it ends up.

If they respond to user feedback it will be something special, although if they're talking to people that want to use a $2k-3k camera as a crash cam then they might not be quite the same things we're chasing.

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The Fp seems like the next big indie hit. A lot of good ideas in such a small body can make the difference.

"Interestingly I also bumped into Sigma CEO Kazuto Yamaki at the show and had some small-talk. I had my venerable Samsung NX1 with me, and he remarked that the product manager for the NX1 went to work for Sigma’s camera team on the Fp! So they are in good hands as this camera was genuinely ground-breaking and ergonomic."

Maybe planning an interview with the product manager would be super interesting.

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wow, this really feels like a throwback to Magic Lantern... can't wait to see where this will go.

Now for me the question is ... will i go with the IBIS full-decked anamorphic S1H, or do i want a little plucky fp that has no IBIS, no opengate... but feels just right.

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So the 4K raw is full frame and down sampled 6K ? I haven't seen anyone confirming that the RAW is full frame.

Any word on the ISO 6, 25 etc ? Does that give you full dynamic range in video or does it just move middle grey for exposure ? If it really does ISO 6 with fulll dynamic range either side of middle grey then that would be huge for me, never need another ND filter ever again and I can shoot video with M lenses and almost put it in my pocket. 

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"In the brochure at IBC the Fp was listed as shooting 4K 10bit RAW internal to UHS-II SDXC card but this has since dropped to 8bit to get the data-rate under what the card can sustain."

 

Out of curiosity, what exactly is this (megabit data) range? I suspect that there is unfortunately no compressed RAW on the FP, which probably means that it is Huge, at every bit depth (8, 10 and 12). Also 8-bit RAW is pretty interesting and I don't know anything camera that shoots 8-bit RAW. Wouldn't the advantage of 8-bit RAW be inexistent, if at all, over hight qualities of ProRes 10-bit (ProRes 422 and ProRes 422 HQ)? 

 

@Andrew Reid your suggestions and feedback to Sigma is pretty interesting. Right now it seems like a very early (non fully functional) prototype and they should listen to ad much customer feedback and they can. 

Uncompressed RAW would be a monumental disaster with a camera this size and with this feature set (even REDs would have enormous file sizes with uncompressed RAW). The ZCams have ProRes to make their cameras extremely usable (in terms of file size). Sigma could do immensely with various flavours of ProRes (or BRAW, though I think Blackmagic won't be allowing anyone else to use their codec on their cameras), and having better storage and a lower price point. 

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14 minutes ago, sanveer said:

Uncompressed RAW would be a monumental disaster with a camera this size and with this feature set (even REDs would have enormous file sizes with uncompressed RAW). The ZCams have ProRes to make their cameras extremely usable (in terms of file size). Sigma could do immensely with various flavours of ProRes (or BRAW, though I think Blackmagic won't be allowing anyone else to use their codec on their cameras), and having better storage and a lower price point. 

It would surely be a hassle, but doable : have a 1 or 2 tera NVME drive for filming, then later offload and compress it to normal SSD storage. 

You could use Slimraw (it does up to 7:1 compression on cDNG), or CineForm Raw. Maybe we will see some BRAW solutions later?

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I so hope this camera will come out as good as it sounds. In the Cinema5D-Interview the Sigma-CEO said they still plan a 2019 release. 

And since Mr. Smith said  they're interested in our feedback: please please please don't wait to long to implement a Log-format for those shoots where the mov-format is sufficient. And please don't limit recordings to 30min. (if the battery even holds that long in this little beast). 

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Sigma can’t go wrong as long as they thoughtful consider user feedback.

The NVMe suggestion should be taken seriously. It makes perfect sense for the form factor and the cDNG uncompressed format they are offering.

It’s clear they want RAW in this camera and they can only do uncompressed at the moment. Which means high bitrates and large files sizes. NVMe sticks tick all those boxes plus form factor and price per GB.

I can see why Panasonic went with dual SD card slots on the S1H. Why didn’t sigma just go with XQD or Express and offer 12bit uncompressed internal?

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4 hours ago, Otago said:

So the 4K raw is full frame and down sampled 6K ? I haven't seen anyone confirming that the RAW is full frame. 

One of main uses of Sigma FP is operating like a director's VF to mimic other large format (from APSC to FF even to LF?) cameras by using the  LVF-11

 

So could you imagine the confusion if the camera couldn't shoot by using the whole sensor area and crop finally ? 

 

 

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7 hours ago, BTM_Pix said:

Are you watching this @mercer ? ;)

Still think people are underestimating how significant a little camera it can be if Sigma are as responsive to feedback as they seem to want to be.

They really need to sort the price out though.

I honestly don’t know what to say about it. 

In the end, I think the FP will live or die based on its price... $3000 is just too much for a 1080p Raw camera... even if it can do 4K external.

With that being said... internal 12 bit 1080p Raw, up to 60p, to SD cards... is pretty perfect for 75% of my use. And then I can grow into the external 4K Raw as new projects and my post hardware grows.

Is the 1080p Raw cropped or is it FF?

If it is FF and it’s $1999 or less... I will preorder and be a test dummy.

I’d also order the 45mm 2.8 lens... did you get a chance to see that at the show? I love the manual aperture ring and f/2.8 is plenty fast enough for FF.

@Andrew Reid SmallRig has an elegant solution for SSDs...

8554DD60-E489-4508-B141-1E99CBF19BD9.jpeg.23afb32100c827a8c2d61e4a8cec6141.jpeg

A7BB1D49-2252-4E95-8576-A7F6E7A95301.jpeg.e7dcf2423af867350ed16a2b60eebc3e.jpeg

Attach a small nato rail to the strap lug and the camera will still be relatively small with a proper handle... it would be great if the handle had a record trigger too, maybe BTM can think of something?

Once SmallRig makes a cage for it, perhaps they’ll implement a handle into the design to keep the unit as small as possible. Their RX100 cage is a great design, so hopefully they go that route instead of forcing this into a huge rig.

Btw, how was the screen?

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