Full Frame Cinema Shootout 2020...

[Evin Grant]

This for sure. On all the exterior shots, day or night, I saw nothing that would keep me from using any of these cameras. And nothing that would indicate I couldn’t grade each of these cameras to match and intercut with the others. ...Nothing to indicate that I wouldn’t be able to get the look I want from any of them. Of course this is looking at them through Vimeo beer goggles, but a great example of how silly a lot of the camera comparisons and camera A being better than camera B claims can get. That said, for me it’s mostly about workflow and I love where we’ve ended up with R3D workflow flexibility these days.

Jeff, here's a vimeo link with a Prores 10bit 422 dowload... https://vimeo.com/388805758

[Evin Grant]

Would have been nice to see #8 and #9 in all settings.

The first night exterior setup broke consistency with #4 and again with #7. Is this just how it worked out for some weird reason or is it to not show something with those cameras; ie: the out of focus lights in the background?

I liked some of what I saw from #8 and #9, but I guess I'm going with ones I could see in all of the setups. And I liked #1 the best of those.

Nice work all around though. Not often we can see a camera selection like this shooting the same setups.



#4 used the "Extra mustard on the hotdog" LUT.

As these things go we were running out of time and the decision was made to let the steadicam op go and just do #4 handheld, not my preference but that camera required the most amount of "rigging" hint hint. #7 was shot first as so was a slightly different angle to the others, I wanted to redo it to match but again time restraints prevented that. We probably bit off more than we could chew but I still think it's useful as is.

[Jarred Land]

Here you go Jarred...
Reds iPP2 w/LI_Color2 709
Sony FX9- Slog3+Allister Chapman's FX9 LUT
Sony FX9- S-Cinetone/No LUT
Sony Venice Slog3Sgamut3.CineTolC-709
Arri Mini LF- K1S1
Sigma FP- Neutral/ No LUT
Canon C500mII- Cinegamut_CanonLog3-709-WideDR

Thanks man. I see some comments on facebook that " this is a useless camera test as this is more of a test about luts and grading than it is about cameras " which to some extent is true.. except the useless part. The reality is that almost all of these cameras would face exactly the same process given real world shooting and deliverables. Everyone processes footage differently and a client usually never sees it till some sort of LUT/Grade has been applied.

I have no idea which any of the cameras are but it shows that we live in a world where the differences are becoming less and less. I think it is safe to say everyone would be happy with a Venice or a RED or a Mini LF on any given day. And for the rest, the price gaps far outweigh the image gaps. Great time to be a shooter.

[Björn Benckert]

Thanks for making the test its always interesting to see. But the subtile differences in well exposed / not stressed color gradings with luts involved is seriously dificult to judge what is what or tell apart. To me its kind of like these cameras all deliver a negative and here we look at lab processed positives. Its so much of that process that is not camera but taste.

Only real way to compare somewhat fairly, I think, Would be if one frame of each was brought into ACES and all exported as 8K EXR files or such. Then sitting and push pulling colors around and seing how rhey break and how they hold up in resolution would, to me, somewhat say what frame came from which camera. Some would call that pixel poking but before realy digging into such level pretty much all we look at are lut/taste and not at all what each camera can deliver.

Simple test is to grade an r3d as lowcon/soft rolloff or hicon/hard rolloff and allready there you got completly different startpoints even though its the same camera.

[Gunleik Groven]

Thanks man. I see some comments on facebook that " this is a useless camera test as this is more of a test about luts and grading than it is about cameras " which to some extent is true.. except the useless part. The reality is that almost all of these cameras would face exactly the same process given real world shooting and deliverables. Everyone processes footage differently and a client usually never sees it till some sort of LUT/Grade has been applied.

I have no idea which any of the cameras are but it shows that we live in a world where the differences are becoming less and less. I think it is safe to say everyone would be happy with a Venice or a RED or a Mini LF on any given day. And for the rest, the price gaps far outweigh the image gaps. Great time to be a shooter.

My thoughts exactly.

This is as far as I can see a very decent use-case test.

I am a bit curious which camera is which, but going back 10 years, cameras were essentially worlds apart, and if you couldn't get and know how to work with one or the other of the good ones, cameras were a real limitation to expression.

Watching what my son gets out of his BM mini, is pure joy.
It doesn't have the DR and stretchability of (fill in favourite camera here), but shit f***ing hell! :)
It's a capable little beast, allowing him to focus on the important parts of cinematography:

Composition, lights, exposure (as a creative tool) and story.

There are cameras in this test I would prefer not to go out with, based on this test alone. (Which wouldn't be fair)

Somehow the caucasian skin in the studio test was the biggest differentiator t me (your milage may vary).

But blaming the TOOL today for lacklustre results, is so... 2008...

[Patrick Tresch]

Then 1 has strange denoise pattern. Did you do something in post? Or is it vimeo? They are really incredible similar when exposed correctly and pretty close even with +6 and -6 exposure error... Noise on the 3 is inexistent.

[David J. Buchanan]

It's funny you say this is a color test because as far as we know the RED should outshine any camera because of it's resolution... Now if you mean color science test, that would be a different story.

[Šabović Adis]

What's funny about asking for our favorite color? Asking color scientists about it - now that would be fun of the century, don't you think? :)

[Hrvoje Simic]

Thanks for making the test its always interesting to see. But the subtile differences in well exposed / not stressed color gradings with luts involved is seriously dificult to judge what is what or tell apart. To me its kind of like these cameras all deliver a negative and here we look at lab processed positives. Its so much of that process that is not camera but taste.

Yes that is normal.
Something has to be done to the negative.

Tests like these are always camera + development tests.

Only real way to compare somewhat fairly, I think, Would be if one frame of each was brought into ACES and all exported as 8K EXR files or such.

Then you would compare cameras + ACES implementation. And upscaling algorythms.

All of these cameras are capable of superior imagery and a lot gets lost in translation.

[Mike P.]

As everyone is mentioning, under normal settings they're all useable/matchable/varying degrees of great looking (coming down to subjective taste).

That being said, LUT differences or not, #1 had the most consistent (and pleasing) image across all of the shooting scenarios. More impressive than that though was how much better and colour consistent it was in the -6/+6 recoveries (substantially better, in my opinion). And that's the juice, right there.

Not saying you want to be shooting -6 or +6, but that capability opens a lot of options (or saves your ass) when things can't be perfect. Like it makes it difficult to botch a shot when -6 and +6 still look awesome when wrangled in.