Sony ships CineAlta F65 4K pro video camera
updated 10:05 am EST, Mon January 16, 2012
Sony returns fire by shipping its first 4K pro cam
Sony followed up on its promises at the start of the week by shipping its first CineAlta F65 pro video camera. Movie camera rental firm Otto Nemenz International picked up the 4K-capable camera. About 400 pre-orders had lined up, with "at least two" large studios planning to start using their F65s almost immediately on projects.
The camera is proclaimed by Sony as the first with "true" 4K, since it's built around a sensor that's technically 8K and reaches a full 4096x2160 rather than in-between specs like 3840x2160 or the Academy-ratio 3656x2664. Theoretically, it puts out some of the highest-quality output when using 16-bit Linear RAW, and like its rivals can jump to 120 frames per second if bitrate isn't the absolute priority.
Among the tricks of the $65,000 camera is the ability to remotely control it over Wi-Fi from an Android tablet or an iPad.
Sony is relatively late to greater-than-HD video shooting and is being undercut by cameras like RED's $34,500 Epic-X and $9,000 Scarlet-X, both of which can shoot in 4K and are already being used in major projects like Peter Jackson's The Hobbit.
Grizzled Veteran
Joined: Oct 1999
Yawn!
Are sites such as MacNN ever going to wise up to the FUD perpetuated by Jim Jannard. RED cameras produce an un-debayered resolution of 4-5K. This is not the same as cameras that produce an ostensibly lower horizontal output resolution of 1920 derived from three (or four) individual colour sub-pixels. By the calculations that Jannard and company use, the Panavision Genesis would be a 5.3K camera. It would be a similar situation with the Alexa and just about every other pro HD camera. When it came to the marketing meeting for the RED, it seems that both the engineers and the truth were locked out of the room. There is also nothing "technical" about the 8K status of the F65's sensor if measured using the dubious "RED" yardstick for resolution. Things are complicated further when you are forced to remember the the debayering process requires the consideration of adjacent pixels on two lines, but that's another story. Bottom line, please reserve the hyperbole about RED for the company's quasi-religious fan-sites and stick to the facts when writing notionally tech-related articles.