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Sony PMW-F3 with 2500 hours on it. Should I buy it?


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5 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

Oh tastyness of colours. Oh F3 so beautiful. Why do you sit around in my livingroom and don´t get picked up, you marvelous wonder of a week full of colours.

Darn, this is beautiful natural light, captured beautifully. I know for pretty sure, what contradiction in itself,:) that noone on cinematography.com would post like many of us do, full of wonder for the simple beauty to behold by an 11 year old camera. They won´t post a simple video as below. Still a very cool forum though. 🙂

 

 

Weird, I just watched this yesterday. I was also going to post it here, but I didn't get the chance.

It looks great, and the production is pretty impressive.

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EOSHD Pro Color 5 for Sony cameras EOSHD Z LOG for Nikon CamerasEOSHD C-LOG and Film Profiles for All Canon DSLRs

Kewl stuff that coincidence! @mercer 🙂 

I browse cameras and sometimes lenses for recreational purposes. Videos as above give me greatest joy and sometimes more pleasure than watching movies. There are some movies with pure visual pleasure, mostly in the genre niche, fi. the japanese horror comedy "Hausu" or "Swordsman".

Sony F3 impresses me. Would have to give mine a run with internal 8bit 420, because my mini SDI to SDI cable for the Blackmagic VA just ripped like a hair-thin string. Also got the Tokina 28-70 2.6 in Nikon mount, which has not risen in price since I bought mine!

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28 minutes ago, PannySVHS said:

Kewl stuff that coincidence! @mercer 🙂 

I browse cameras and sometimes lenses for recreational purposes. Videos as above give me greatest joy and sometimes more pleasure than watching movies. There are some movies with pure visual pleasure, mostly in the genre niche, fi. the japanese horror comedy "Hausu" or "Swordsman".

Sony F3 impresses me. Would have to give mine a run with internal 8bit 420, because my mini SDI to SDI cable for the Blackmagic VA just ripped like a hair-thin string. Also got the Tokina 28-70 2.6 in Nikon mount, which has not risen in price since I bought mine!

Same.

You gotta get that camera rigged up to shoot something with! If I could find one for the right price, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. It goes against my compact, run and gun preferences, but the IQ is undeniable. I regularly look at the video with the classical music and beautiful red headed woman. It's one of the nicest images I've seen on an accessible camera. 

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Yeah, they are a great image maker. I wish I had bought one instead of my Panasonic AF-100. I really liked the Panny but it was not as good as a F3.

But the Canon C100 I had was about as good I think. Hard to beat Canon colors and the tiny Codec was just hard to believe how little data it produced. And you didn't need an external recorder to make it happen.

There is some damn good older cameras out there for hardly any money. True most don't do 4K but beautiful 1080p is pretty hard to beat, and the editing stress on your computer is Really low. 

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4 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

But the Canon C100 I had was about as good I think. Hard to beat Canon colors and the tiny Codec was just hard to believe how little data it produced. 

The C100 was very good 1080 8bit 420 for its time, but 1080 10bit 444 (or even 422) is going to be better when you really need it. 

But for me, I didn't like the C100 (and liked the F3) for all the many other things the C100 lacked, such as no SDI and no TC. Pretty big deal breakers for many. 

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I agree, but the C100 was just a Lot more portable and ended up being the documentary king. The F3 was a studio camera. Canon sold one hell of a lot more C100's than Sony ever did F3's. A C100 with DPAF is worth twice what a F3 is even today on average. 

I don't think a person can go wrong with either, it depends on what your Jandra is more than anything.

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59 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

Canon sold one hell of a lot more C100's than Sony ever did F3's.

Because a C100 was vastly cheaper than the F3, it was never a competitor to the F3 anyway. 

The C300mk1 (and Sony's own FS700) were the nearest competitors to the Sony PMW-F3 back during that era. 

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The Sony PMW F3 came out in 2010, the Canon C100 came out in 2012. By 2015 you could buy the F3 for 4000 bucks. The price of the C100 killed sales of the F3 until they lowered it. Plus Sony wanted an Anal amount of money for the 4444 upgrade, like 4000 bucks, which they lowered to 1000, then finally just included it..

 

 

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Motion just looks so right with this camera. There is a creamyness to the movements.  Motion in the frame and motion of the camera both look very involving and suck you into the image, in my humble reception.

I think that this is one of the most compelling attributes of the image, the way kinectics are rendered, thatfore the title cine camera is well deserved. Kine(tic) - Cine, we are all getting it, right? 🙂

So here is a video from our usual suspect and one of the best unofficial Cinealta F3 ambassadors, Josef Götherskjöld, the Matthias Burling of motorsport videos.:)

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Last week I got a F3 include the original FZ-PL mount for 530US$ in China, NO SXS card, NO battery, NO mic, but with 444 upgrade and 3D shooting upgrade with only less than 500 hrs op time. Thought it was a relly nice bargain. Only down side is there is some kind glue marks on the LCD hinge cover. But it dose come in cheap and nice, I can live with it.

Since this camera was discontinued for a decade, I don't think there were any 3rd party rigs for sale. So I designed a base plate and a top cheese plate this weekend, waiting for machining and oxidizing now. Maybe I'll get back next week to show your guys the outcome.

Tested it for a little bit with video devices PIX-E5, truly amazing image quality (or more specific: the color science) both under sunlight and nighttime. Looking for some amatuer project to shoot, and get some lovely pictures😀

Forgive my English, i"m not very good at it.

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update 0.1:

since it doesn't come with mic or mic stand, there were a big ugly hole on the right side handle, so I used some soft  silicone rubber that left from some old project, cut it with razor and voila! a rubber cover, not pretty but it works and I don't need to worry dust and rain water will get inside handle anymore.

Here are some screen shot fresh comes out of it, RGB444 on PIXE5, 180° shutter and ISO800, SLOG of course, 5600k WB, just transferd it to R709 and a tiny touch to exposure. The dynamic range and color science is truly amazing! Indeed it is a reason that F3 was called 'baby alexa'

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You got it for that cheap?  That’s crazy!  Best camera ever at that price. Would be a dream, my ideal image. Beautiful detailed organic 1080p with great DR and color. Kind of hilarious how Sony had their color figured out clear back in the Sony F3 (and even F35) days!  And yet the A7sii, A7iii, etc. made it look like Sony color scientists had amnesia. 
 

If only the camera was not so big and heavy, then it would be perfect for me. I guess I just don’t care for large setups. 

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4 hours ago, FHDcrew said:

You got it for that cheap?  That’s crazy!  Best camera ever at that price. Would be a dream, my ideal image. Beautiful detailed organic 1080p with great DR and color. Kind of hilarious how Sony had their color figured out clear back in the Sony F3 (and even F35) days!  And yet the A7sii, A7iii, etc. made it look like Sony color scientists had amnesia. 
 

If only the camera was not so big and heavy, then it would be perfect for me. I guess I just don’t care for large setups. 

Yes, the money I paid is like a steal. Also I managed to find a pretty nice looking used EF-FZ adaptor made by KIPON, no LDS but with full manual iris control just around 90 US$, so the total price is exact 619$.

I think the last owner is a well known rental company located in Beijing, the man who sell me this camera says he had to dig in the storage cabinet to get this old camera out, and he still got 5 more in hand with the same price but no 444 upgrade.

 

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Funny thing is, although this camera is in CINEALTA product line, but the sensor is actually provided by FUJIFILM, I found a used parts disassembled form F3, and it clearly says the manufacturer. So Sony, what are you guys doing?c70d5539a83f2d657b5d6a8ae66c015.thumb.jpg.c2c15e2bfedad89d1b82da73e2a0c41c.jpg

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I don't really mind the weight, in fact I like heavy camera. Heavier camera will gives you a  more 'cinematic'  movement IMHO. But size does matter. Besides the price, a important reason I choose baby alexa instead of the REAL ALEXA (CLASSIC) is size, the real alexa is just too big for small team operation.

 

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