Is Sony’s 4K Digital Cinema Sensor Better Than Film?
It was only a matter of time until digital sensor would equal or even surpass the film quality. And with the recent announcement of the Sony F65 camera Sony stated in the F65 brochure (Click here) that this time has now come: “Through all the decades, our design goal has always been to match the photographic quality of 35mm film. But now we’re setting our sights even higher: to surpass the limits of human vision. The F65 image sensor is the first of this new breed”.
The new sensor has a 14 stop dynamic range and a much wider color gamut than film. See the graph below:
I cannot wait to see first video samples shot with the F65. And I do hope that soon the Alpha mount cameras can catch up with B&W film too! I hope the A99 Sony press release will sound as amazing as that F65 brochure 
P.S.: A behind the scenes video is available here: pro.sony.com
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Comment from chargerbattery: This is Sony’s new flagship and tradit...
Comment from Omega: There is no such thing as color gamut fo...
Comment from Atmo-Sphere: I think that there is nothing wrong with...
Comment from frosti7: Portra 400 is the finest grain 400 film ...
Avenir
8 months ago |It’s SONY’s 8K sensor used for 4K digital cinema, and it sounds like same 24Mp sensor used in Nex7 and A77. In theory, F65 footage should not be much different from A77 RAW or TIFF.
FK
8 months ago |I’m quite sure it isn’t.
This is Sony’s new flagship and traditionally Motion Picture and Broadcast cameras always had individual sensors. Apperantly they changed the classical Bayer to a rombical arrangement, still having the 2green 1 red 1 blue ratio.
However some of that technology might be used in the new full frame and upcoming asp-c sensors, too.
But the thing that intrigues me the most is the following one, normally on moving pictures image noise can be hard to handle and annoying for the viewer once it is getting to strong, since the pmw-f3 had shown really outstanding high gain performance showing really usable material to an equivalent to ISO 3200 i wonder if Sony found a way to reach such great performance with the new F65, too. If they do that could finally mean that on the longterm we might finally see an ASP-C SLT that shows significantly better High-ISO performance then the A700 (the A77 is only slightly better) and significantly better High-ISO performance then the A900.
monkeyfacemcbride
8 months ago |I seem to remember them saying recently that they were playing with white (i.e non-filtered) photosites in addition to the filtered ones in an RGBY array to get better luminance information and less noise. Whether anything will come of that I dont know, but with the pixel counts in the rumoured FF sensor it would be possible without compromising colour info too much.
Neo NiGHTS ®
8 months ago |FOUR years ago there was this news about a sensor from Kodak using white pixels:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0706/07061401kodakhighsens.asp
But since then, there were no news about that, so I guess it became a vaporware.
monkeyfacemcbride
8 months ago |Ahh, found it, it was in the Sony Super Reality Sensor presentation. Andrea even did an blog on it which is handy, link here: http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/sonys-wants-to-create-a-super-reality-sensor/
Neo NiGHTS ®
8 months ago |Cool! I was away during this period so I completely missed that post.
But seeing the diagrams: http://i1214.photobucket.com/albums/cc498/43rumors/Sony2011_8-13.jpg wasn’t the exactly same thing Kodak was doing?
Did Sony buy their technology?
*EDIT* I’ve looked more carefully on the array and it isn’t the *EXACTLY* same thing, but same principles. Still… did Sony buy Kodak’s technology?
John Spenser
8 months ago |Not even close to a consumer sensor…. I’ve played with the F65…..
frosti7
8 months ago |Thats cute, but my portra 400 film has 19-stop dynamic range
someone
8 months ago |19 stops?
is there any proof for that? i couldn’t find any yet…
i really might consider buying a film camera if that is true?
frosti7
8 months ago |http://www.landscapegb.com/2011/05/kodaks-new-portra-400-film/
i took this shot a few days ago (straight from scanner, no PP)
https://s-hphotos-sea1.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/338816_10150314442223090_668888089_8027764_829401694_o.jpg
z
8 months ago |19 stops is okay and all. But this film looks to have most grain of all 400 film. The grain quality is meh, it looks nothing like beautiful film grain at all. Less contrast and worst colors too.
Dynamic range is to overrated right now. It is very very very useful for scenery. But I never watch National Geographic at cinema nowadays. Film industry even limits the dynamic range most of the time to improve contrast and cine look. Cine is all about gamut and color reproduction all around.
Then again porta 400 is all about dynamic range. If you want more contrast, better gamut and better film grain, you better of with a fuji or, you know, digital.
frosti7
8 months ago |Portra 400 is the finest grain 400 film ever created, contrast wise you cannot get high contrast and high dynamic range at the same shot, unless your doing an HDR image, which looks as natrual as CGI generated content
Erational
8 months ago |Wow 19 stops ! I had to go check that out, and you were right. Guess film hasn’t been set in amber, it’s still progressing. I came thiiiiisss close to buying a medium format film camera recently. So frustrated with the constant fiddling to get colors right in post-processing with digital.
I looked at my old slides, I saw how closed-off my shadow areas were with my last MF camera. 19 stops would open-up the shadows and reveal the detail therein. So frustrated with the constant fiddling to get colors right in post-processing with digital. Don’t have to muck about with color adjustment in film.
19 stops would mean there is detail like digital in the shadows. The best digital 35mm does right now is 13 stops. For me it was hard to get excited about Kodak when there was Fuji 50 and 100F to be had
SonyAlphaLab
8 months ago |I don’t know, Looks promising that this will trickle down to stuff we use eventually. 19-stops Frosti7!! Dam I know nothing about film, but that does make total sense.
Anybody know what there using to film Planet Earth Stuff? Some of the scenes look like HDR I swear!!
Jay
Erational
8 months ago |A $65,000. cine camera announcement really does not seem to fit into a blog about consumer photo electronics. I get the idea about sensor being of interest, but details about the Sony F65 would be better served at a site like http://www.EOSHD.com , a site largely about video. Amin., this site is not the place for such professional cinema gear. When the F65′s sensor starts to filter to consumer electronics, then perhaps we can talk about more about those products. No-one is going to be buying the F65 to film their baby’s first steps, are they ? No.
Atmo-Sphere
8 months ago |I think that there is nothing wrong with taking a sneak peak at high end sensor developements now and then to translate some of them into what we might expect to see in the near future of digital still cameras because:
1. This IS a rumor site; aimed at the future and predictions
2. These high-end features indeed DO flow ‘downwards’ in the product-chain eventually..like F1 features eventually end up in consumer cars.
3. Car magazines (for example) DO look at F1 developements for that same reason…although none of their readers is ever going to his/her work in a F1 purebreed.
Omega
8 months ago |There is no such thing as color gamut for photosensor.
chargerbattery
8 months ago |This is Sony’s new flagship and traditionally Motion Picture and Broadcast cameras always had individual sensors.
http://www.chargerbatteryshop.co.uk/panasonic-lumix-dmc-fs42-battery-charger-cbbs.html